Selena Gomez looked exhausted in a recent social media post addressing her weight gain, and I don’t blame her. The very fact she felt she needed to defend herself for gaining a few pounds is depressingly predictable, having spent her entire life since her teen yearshaving her body relentlessly scrutinized.
After her appearance at the Grammys in January – where she looked sensational in a black, strapless, velvet dress with puffed purple sleeves – the internet was rushing to google ‘Selena Gomez weight gain’ and ‘Selena Gomez health’ and not, as you might think, for her Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy nomination for her role in Hulu’s runaway hit Only Murders In The Building. Following the same predictable headlines and body shaming, Selena seemed able to brush off the comments, but now she’s posted another video explaining that the lupus medication she takes can affect her weight, saying, ‘When I’m taking it, I tend to hold a lot of water weight, and that happens very normally. When I’m off of it, I tend to kind of lose weight.’
Can we just pause right here, please?
As part of a select group of women manufactured since childhood by Disney’s media machine also including Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus (both of whom have publicly spoken about issues with food), Selena knows more than most the intense pressure that those in public eye are under to fit into neat boxes. From not visibly ageing to not gaining weight, we expect our starlets in particular to be fit for delicious consumption, all saccharine goodness packaged up in aesthetically perfect outer shells.
But Selena is an adult now and more than just a product of the machine that made her, with some proper acting jobs under her belt, a music career and, at one point, more followers on Instagram than anyone else in the world. She’s also open about her health issues, battling autoimmune condition lupus, which leaves sufferers feeling extreme fatigue, muscle pain and inflammation and is usually treated with steroids.
That Selena’s quality of life improving medication affects her weight should be of no more concern to people than the fact she ‘enjoyed [her]self during the holidays’ – in short, there should be no defence necessary. Selena Gomez does not need to defend the fact she’s put on weight, because she certainly shouldn’t be attacked for doing so.
Obviously, this is a big ask in a world where headlines and google searches about women’s bodies will always take precedence over ones about, well, anything else (save from maybe their sex lives?). It’s no wonder she felt cornered into ‘explaining’ why she looked a little different. But she really shouldn't have to.