Real Talk 24th March 2023 by Jade Carpenter

Why There Should Be No ‘Team Hailey’ Or ‘Team Selena’

Honestly? I'm exhausted of this narrative.

 

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I know we’re all sick to our teeth of hearing about the Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber situation, it has covered my fyp and newsfeed for weeks and when I hear it being brought up again I can’t help but think ‘really? we’re still on this?’, so I can only imagine how they feel.

In any of the places where this topic has been discussed, there is a tendency for those chatting about it to reveal where their allegiance lies. “Are you team Hailey or team Selena?” I have been asked multiple times in the last while because I am a fan of both women.

This is a question many have taken to social media to share their answer to, with the majority choosing ‘team Selena’. It has become a narrative where Selena’s supporters are right and everything else was wrong. And Hailey supporters? Well, they were few and far between on my algorithm.

 

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My answer? Neither and both. This entire situation feels like drama for the sake of drama, not brought on by any of the named women, but by the internet. I’m on neither side because I don’t believe there are sides in reality. I think the internet has created a narrative that has snowballed into borderline fiction at this point. Picking a “side” based on theories feels unnecessary and unfair.

The facts are that Kylie Jenner and Selena Gomez told us there was no situation when it all began with ‘eyebrow gate’, so that is what we should have heard and moved on.

What more could be done to diffuse a situation than two people involved being like, ‘it’s grand lads’?

But no, instead it became an opportunity for fans who dislike Hailey to spread a lot of hate her way. Particularly by discrediting and dissecting her relationship with her husband Justin Bieber.

Emphasis on the word husband there. The pair are married, since 2018. What do any of them have to do to make people get over ‘Jelena’, if literally being married for coming up to FIVE years hasn’t done it?

Today Selena once again reached out and asked people to stop sending negative messages to Hailey after learning the model was receiving death threats. Hailey Bieber has been receiving death threats because some people like her husband’s old relationship. Hailey has done nothing wrong, and no I don’t think she was ‘hitting out at Selena’ with any social media post.

Leave the girl alone. In fact, leave them all alone.

These two women have BOTH experienced love and heartbreak with the same man. This is not their fault. For one of them, it ended up working out and they are happily married now, for the other, it was not meant to be. Whatever feelings they may have had about each other as teenagers in somewhat of a love triangle, would be totally natural for people that age in that situation.

Justin is the one who was involved with both women, they are not involved with each other. Do I think Justin deserves negativity thrown his way? No, to be honest, I don’t. Even if he didn’t treat either girl how they should have been at one point, he was a troubled teenager, who has since spoken about his regret of his past. He too has asked for the negativity to stop and has constantly showed love for his wife, despite what TikTok edits you may have watched.

Right now, all any of the involved members deserve is peace.

 

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Imagine being married and every day being reminded of your husband’s ex, being compared to her and told that he doesn’t love you. It may seem like these people are something of fiction when you only see them on your screen, but they are very real with very real emotions. This is bullying and it’s not right.

Both Hailey and Selena have tried to put this to sleep multiple times. They even broke the internet last year by posing for a picture together. Yes, it was an iconic moment and the closure to a decade of rumoured feuds that the internet needed, but for them, it was also an attempt to end the storyline that has linked them to each other all this time as they were just trying to grow and live. That should have been the closing of the chapter.

There is nothing more either woman can do to get this drama to stop. It is up to us, and we must stop choosing to feed into these rumours and stories from years ago.

Did they once probably feel a certain way about each other? I’m sure they did! If you were a teenager you wouldn’t be thrilled about your ex’s new romance either. It’s normal.

Do they need to be best friends now? Nope. Why would anyone want to be super close with their husband’s ex long-term girlfriend? But they don’t have to feud and they simply aren’t.


We need to stop pitting women against each other and creating a world where only one can succeed.

You’re allowed to be a fan of both women, you’re allowed to feel indifferent about it too, but what we can’t be doing is continuing to paint one out as a villain because we are unable to separate a theory or speculation from the information we are given from the direct source.

Be kind is a term we are often reminded of online, and this is a time when people need some reminding. How quickly people forget the promises they made to spread positivity when there’s a witch hunt. Let’s think before we engage, okay?

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