When Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber smiled and posed for photos together at the second annual Academy Museum Gala in Los Angeles on Saturday, showbiz spectators were beside themselves: ‘Love rivals call a truce!’ tabloid headlines screamed. ‘Wtf is going on?’ questioned fans.
For those out of the loop, the frisson comes in response to feud rumours that have successfully circulated for almost a decade thanks to a supposed love triangle with Justin Bieber. Hailey was first romantically linked to Justin in 2014, while he and Selena were on a break. Hailey then eventually married him in March 2018, just six months after his eight-year relationship with Selena came fully to an end.
Due to the interwoven timelines and speedy nuptials, Selena’s fandom furiously called foul play and have relentlessly trolled Hailey ever since: ‘Leave me alone, please,’ the model begged on TikTok this year. ‘I beg of you, truly. That’s my only request. Leave me alone. Be miserable somewhere else. Please.’
From trolls to tabloids, the alleged ‘feud’ is arguably Hollywood’s most persistent catfight narrative. And despite Hailey and Selena’s pleas—fans won’t allow it to stop. ‘Don’t let this picture fool you,’ read one Tweet, now with over 16,000 likes. ‘Hailey Bieber spent years bullying Selena Gomez on social media, she spent years talking shit about her around LA and still does. She doesn’t like Selena, and that photo only proves that Selena is too nice.’
Yet, both Selena and Hailey have condemned allegations of drama between them. ‘I do not stand for women tearing women down,’ Selena told her followers on a live stream in 2019. ‘If you’re my fans don’t be rude to anybody…For me, know that’s not my heart,’ she said.
Last month, Hailey openly addressed the situation on the Call Her Daddy podcast, where she emphasised that her relationship with Justin had never overlapped with Selena’s. ‘It's not my character to mess with someone's relationship,’ she said. ‘I would just never do that. I was raised better than that. I'm not interested in doing that and I never was.’
Referencing the backlash to her and Justin’s rapid wedding she acknowledged it was ‘really drastic and really crazy’ but maintained it was the right decision. ‘The only people that really know the truth of the situation and what the timeline really was and how it happened and how it went down are me and him,’ she said, adding there is ‘no drama’ with Selena at all.
To continually cast Hailey and Selena as jealous competitors craving Justin’s attention while hating each other is fundamentally misogynistic. Despite what gender stereotypes have long informed us, women’s relationships are not characterised by rivalry, envy or so-called ‘bitchiness’.
Verbally in interviews and physically through Museum Gala photos, Selena and Hailey have publicly confirmed there’s no bad blood between them. Now, neither woman should be forced to waste any more energy talking about Justin Bieber’s love life decisions when he has never bothered to comment.