It’s 2023, which means social media, pop culture magazines and celebrities are buzzing around the latest celebrity feud: musician Justin Bieber’s wife, Hailey Bieber vs. Selena Gomez, his ex-girlfriend. To some, the feud started with Bieber allegedly shading Gomez online. According to Stylecaster, Bieber posted a video using the sound “I’m not saying she deserved it, but God’s timing is always right,” after Gomez was body-shamed for her vacation photos.
The video was deleted soon after with a follow-up from Bieber stating that her video had nothing to do with Gomez. Gomez never responded with hostility, often defending Bieber, who did the same for her. Regardless, the media and its consumers did not break their focus and continued to inflate the supposed “conflict” for months.
Despite the constant effort to de-escalate the reactions and show their support for each other, the public wanted a war between the women. Pitting women against each other has been a common behavior not just in pop culture but in society. It is often masked by the idea of holding people accountable but when people jump to conclusions and go against the will of those actually involved in the situation, is it really accountability?
On top of these reactions, people have made efforts to closely monitor Beiber’s life to support their opinions about her.
A video from 2015 resurfaced where a security guard mistook her for a fan and tried to stop her from getting Bieber’s car when they left a club together. Videos of her listening to his music before they were together were found not long after. Even before the ordeal with Gomez, there were rumors that Justin had cheated on Gomez with Hailey when they were dating.
As the footage was shared across the internet, she became increasingly mocked. Many made fun of her past as a Bieber fan and used it to say she needed to be humbled. The comment sections of the 2015 video flooded with people saying she was put in her place. None of these videos did she ever do anything wrong, they simply served as ways to supposedly humble her and tear down an image of herself they were convinced she had.
This displays another common behavior towards women especially in the public eye: policing. Society acts like a judge, putting women in the defendant’s seat. Women like Hailey Bieber are picked apart meticulously to find even the smallest imperfections or “oddities” to find reasons to dislike them.
Why is it that people took the liberty of resurfacing videos from when she was only 18 years old to feed their perceptions of her? Why is it that people automatically assume she is competing with another woman when she makes an ambiguous post? Why is it that the public will escalate a situation despite its being swiftly handled by those involved and despite the pleas of a woman to stop for the sake of her mental health? Simply because seeing women suffer is entertaining. Whenever women are in a comfortable position in their lives, society will find some way to say that she does not deserve it, try to take it from her, and take delight in doing this successfully.
The world is in an era of rapid social change, especially in gender equality. Though many say they stand for women’s liberation, many still have a long way to go, and the reaction to Hailey Bieber is a gleaming example of this. If they truly want to stand for equality, they need to stop assuming the worst in women and searching for reasons to do so. Most of all, society needs to stop punishing women for simply existing.
