The tradition of publicly deciding which famous woman is most worthy of a particular famous male partner is as old as it keeps returning: Debbie vs. Elizabeth, Camilla vs. Diana, Angelina vs. Jen, Betty vs. Veronica, et al. It has been like this for the past few weeks Selena Gomez And Hailey Bieber. The details of the recent flare-up are less important than the underlying condition, which is the rapid breakdown of the fourth wall between supposedly “hostile” celebrities and us, the audience. Coupled with the internet’s perpetual callback, any glimpse toward real or imagined A-list antagonism only further contributes to a shared Super Bowl grudge match that keeps us happy, like our projection-prone ancestors, such wondrous flawed deities to have to talk about further .
Do you actually want to know what happened, or rather, what didn’t happen? In short, Selena and Hailey have been linked to the eternal baby of the pop music family in the public imagination Justin Bieber as long as the average millennial can remember. Selena was famous and occasionally with the musician between 2010 and 2018, Hailey and Justin married in September 2018 and since then have never been able to completely dispel the suspicions of the “Jelena” shippers about the structural integrity of their marriage. Last fall, both women seemed to appeal to the rumor mill by being photographed together at a gala, but perhaps the most notable change in the ongoing internet-fueled Easter egg hunt for evidence of the animosity between the two is that it’s moved to TikTok. Same stuff, new platform.
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But well, if you absolutely must know, and here we all remind you to take a deep breath, the latest evidence primarily involves Hailey allegedly shadowing Selena via TikTok video in January, then Hailey is said to have allegedly shadowed Selena’s eyebrows via Instagram Have mocked a third-party story a la KylieJenner later in February. (We’re eschewing the journalistic convention of using last names henceforth to keep track and honor the spirit of all the theories.) In the latter incident, Selena commented on a TikTok video in defense the same day taylor swift, allegedly by Hailey; later, Selena announced on TikTok Live that she was taking a break from social media because “this is a little bit silly, and I’m 30, I’m too old for this.” Selena then left a few more comments on TikTok videos , in which users sympathized with her side of the so-called “rivalry,” and then posted a tweet in early March indirectly urging people to consider the “mental health of others.” [sic]. Justin celebrated his 29th birthday last weekend, which meant that both of the Biebers’ social media posts marking the occasion provided ample material for forensic investigation; On Monday, BuzzFeed News dedicated a push alert to the detail of what appeared to be a party favor, with the caption, “I’m so thankful I didn’t get what I wanted.” You can see why the set of red Yarn and cork board literally foams in front of the mouth.
At the heart of this feud, or as I would more accurately call it, a conspiracy theory about a feud that very well doesn’t exist, is the issue of credibility. In order to spend your time forming opinions about whether you’re either Team “Jelena” or Team “Jailey,” you have to believe that there is a genuine interpersonal rivalry (which both Hailey and Selena try to counter at various points have) that you need to take care of in the first place. From there, just about any personal guesswork about the motivations and relationships in question can be backed up with the right lyrics, interview clip, or video, overlaid with an analysis of armchair body language and convincingly recontextualized by an army of netizen norms. Ultimately, you choose to believe either the Hailey-Stans or the Selena-Stans — meaning, when it comes to pitting two women against each other, you’re implicitly choosing which woman seems like the one you know, and which seems like the one who you don’t know totally trust.
So a pity about the extreme disadvantage that a woman clearly has in this war of competing authenticity. Selena Gomez, a former Disney Channel child star, surpasses Hailey Bieber not only for the primacy effect — nor for the life of commercialized self-expression that is a pop music career — but also for a closely nurtured relationship with the public. Throughout Selena’s coming of age, she has been both visibly and visibly outspoken, most notably by sharing her physical and mental struggles with the world, most recently via last fall’s Apple TV+ documentary My Mind & Me. As a Selena fan, you feel like there’s nothing she won’t tell you herself — and watch her do it on Hulu Steve Martin And Martin Kurz on Only Murders in the Building certainly reinforces her literal girl-next-door charm.
Meanwhile, Hailey Bieber has been typecast as your textbook Nepo babe. In public, her importance was always based on her affiliation as Baldwin or Bieber; The credentials she possesses as a former ballet dancer, runway model, and business owner are overshadowed by her friendships with celebrities like the Kardashian-Jenners, who are themselves the poster child family for this second-hand smoke quality of influence of modern fame that still attracts ridicule and arouses distrust. No wonder the prevailing opinion on the internet — at least in the corner I’m in — is that Hailey seems dishonest or pathetic or just plain wrong. No amount of Vogue covers, Instagram posts, or denominational podcast interviews — more on that in a moment — could ever compete with the emotional intimacy Selena has built throughout her life.
And so, Hailey offers an easy target for ridicule: look how boring she is, look how hardworking she is, look how unoriginal she is. On TikTok, viral videos under the hashtag #HaileyCopySelena present a ruthless cataloging of similarities between women’s clothing, tattoos and even interview answers side by side. Wildly ridiculed, Bieber even has the very “authentic” moments the internet supposedly finds relatable — clips of her falling, a car door being closed in front of her, or colliding with a paparazzi — are presented with glee because they share them have already decided that she is the villain and therefore deserves the embarrassment.
Last October, Hailey accepted Alex Cooper‘s Call Her Daddy podcast – which has become sort of a Red Table Talk-cum-Oprah confession ritual for a certain professional hot girl set. During an hour-long conversation (even videotaped for further transparency), Hailey discussed marriage, sex and of course the alleged feud with Selena, insisting, “I respect her; There’s no drama, personally.” The reaction on the internet remained skeptical; didn’t raising Selena prove “once and for all” that Hailey was still obsessed with her husband’s ex? Contrast that malevolent vitriol to the kind of praise TikTokkers regularly heap on Selena, who is praised for being “head-to-toe straight natural” and “always so honest and so authentic, which isn’t easy.”
And of course, while few of us really know celebrities as people, we can all create elaborate schemes of who we think they are based on the loose, informative litter that washes ashore our perception, thousands of nautical miles from his Original removes context. Selena doesn’t win as much as the idea of Selena winning, which presents a dilemma of its own for the real women at the heart of this internet obsession: How much should it seem to them?
If sympathy and belonging are the qualities the internet will forever favor, which response is more “real”: speak up and tell the truth (but risk being blinded by more attention) or remain silent and undisturbed (and possibly relinquish control of the narrative) ? We, the audience, say we expect discretion rather than attention-seeking, but we can’t help but find direct contact more credible. At least Selena seems to know the answer. Taking to TikTok Live to announce a hiatus on social media, and later admitting to fans that “My heart has been heavy” manages to hit the best and most ambiguous note in an ultimately lost frame . Here on the internet, that kind of restraint only goes so far.
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