Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably seen something somewhere online about zoomer fashion muse and model Hailey Bieber’s fall from social grace; it has been fascinating to watch it play out in real time. For the well adjusted grass-touchers who are unaware, it all began in 2018 when Hailey married long time on-again-off-again beau Justin Bieber just a few months after he and long time on-again-off-again girlfriend Selena Gomez broke up.
Ever since, there has been an ongoing suspected “feud” between Hailey and Selena. Drama between the two has popped up in media cycles every few months. Recently, the spectacle came to a head when a screenshot of Hailey Bieber and fellow nepo-baby queen bee Kylie Jenner making fun of Gomez’s eyebrows was shared to Jenner’s instagram story. If you’re thinking this all sounds like ridiculous middle-school pettiness among a bunch of privileged, wealthy adult women, you’re not alone. So why can’t we look away?
Gomez, who recently dethroned Kylie Jenner as the most subscribed-to woman on Instagram, seems to be coming out as the clear champion in all of this. Thousands of fans on the internet have pledged their allegiance to Gomez as the victim of this controversy; the innocent lamb being dogged by vicious wolves in gold hoop earrings and bike shorts. Yet, in the last few weeks, Gomez too has been caught stirring up the pot; between commenting on TikToks about the situation, and referencing past beef between Bieber and Gomez’ BFF, Taylor Swift, one could argue that Gomez has only been pouring gasoline on the fire.
Now Gomez is on a “self imposed” (read: damage control) social media cleanse, people have been recorded cursing out Hailey witch-hunt style at her husband’s show at Rolling Loud, and every headline that scrolls across my dashboard is a bleeding heart for poor, sweet, self-made millionaire Selena. It’s the bigger picture of it all that has me really interested; why are we as a culture so obsessed with infantilizing and villainizing adult women? Why do we love to pretend like we know a fraction of these people’s lives?
It’s hard not to feel like it’s a direct consequence of our tendency to dehumanize celebrities; we love to flatten these people into mirrors for our own opinions and obsessions. In reality, celebrity PR teams love to weaponize our projections. The echo chamber of short-form social media has formed a centrifuge of simulacrum: separating stars from their humanity and transforming faux-relatable heroes to resented caricatures in a matter of weeks. In this scenario, Bieber has mapped out a dizzying trajectory from 30 under 30 it-girl to IRL Regina George.
Trying to make heads or tails of who is being manipulated and whom is manipulating in these stories may appeal to the inner Benoit Blanc in all of us, but when you get down to it, it really is all just noise and marketing; not to mention the vitriolic misogyny that tends to be drawn out of the public in these winner-takes-it-all campaigns. Instead of asking who the real bad guy is in these famous love triangles, we should be asking ourselves: Who says there has to be one in the first place?
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