Selena Gomez: What Her Struggles With Lupus And Bipolar Disorder Meant For Her Relationships With Benny Blanco And Justin Bieber – And What The Smear Campaign Against Hailey Bieber Say About Her

A lot of celebrities were mentioned in Blake Lively’s complaint against her ‘It Ends With Us’ co-star and director, Justin Baldoni. I dedicated an entire blog entry to one of those celebrities, Lively’s close friend of a decade and godmother to her children, Taylor Swift. More specifically, I compared the smear campaign put against Swift in 2016 to that of Blake Lively’s in 2024, and explained why the two were completely different. Another celebrity mentioned in the complaint was Hailey Bieber. Lively used a text written by Baldoni as evidence that read, ‘Hailey Bieber’s history of bullying women. This is what we would need.’ Baldoni’s PR crisis manager, Melissa Nathan, who also worked as Johnny Depp’s crisis manager during his trial against Amber Heard, called it ‘astroturfing’ which is the practice of creating fictitious grassroots campaigns. In her complaint, Lively accused Baldoni of orchestrating a smear campaign against, which greatly hurt her career as an actress and entrepreneur.

Bieber, previously known as Baldwin before marrying Justin Bieber, and Swift are somewhat related to one another. Not in a literal sense. They’re not family. But they do have ties that make them relevant one another. Hailey Bieber is married to Justin Bieber, who used to date Selena Gomez on-and-off between 2010 and 2018. Gomez is Swift’s longtime best friend since 2008. They first met at a Jonas Brothers concert when they both dated them. Swift dated Joe Jonas, who infamously broke up with her over a 27 second phone call, and Gomez dated Nick Jonas, which ended her friendship with Miley Cyrus, who also dated Nick Jonas beforehand. Gomez’s friendship with Swift created a friction between her and Demi Lovato, who became friends when they were just 7 years old.

People couldn’t get enough of this teen drama back in the day. Even more so now, fans are still finding themselves reminiscing of Miley, Demi, and Selena’s innocent days and how Taylor had something to do with breaking them apart. The first signs of trouble and friction between them was in 2010, when Demi was asked by a reported how Selena was doing, to which Demi replied, ‘Ask Taylor!’ They were seen together from time in the years since, but they were obviously not as close as they used to be. The last time the former friends were seen together was in October 2017, when they posed together at the third annual Instyle Awards ceremony. Of their fractured friendship, Lovato told Harper’s Bazar in 2020, ‘When you grow up with somebody, you’re always going to have love for them. But I’m not friends with her, so it felt…I will always have love for her, and I wish everybody nothing but the best.’

Swift and Gomez’s friendship stood the test of time. They’re still friends to this day. Gomez’s friendship, on the other hand, didn’t. That’s not to say that either one of them is a bad person. They’d both been through a lot. Sometimes, a friendship can’t continue when two people go through as tough health struggles as they both individually did. Demi Lovato struggled with a turmoil drug addiction, which landed her in rehab several times. She even almost died due to her drug addiction in 2018. Her 2018 drug overdose still affects her to this day. Gomez has struggled with lupus, which is now in remission. In 2017, she’d undergone a kidney transplant, donated by Francia Raisa. Both Lovato and Gomez have also struggled with bipolar disorder.

It’s all just messy. I know because I’ve been through it. I lost a lot of friendships in the years following my epilepsy diagnosis. The thing about a woman, or a man, going through such health struggles, they’re a completely changed person. It’s like the person they were before their illness passes away and never to be seen again. I personally don’t think I even remember the person I was before my epilepsy diagnosis or the car accident that caused it. I don’t even think I’d even recognize the person I was back then if I were to meet her now. With that being said, it’s really no surprise that Selena and Demi are no longer friends. They’re not the same people they were when they were growing up. A lot happened since then to both of them – good and bad. The end of their friendship was inevitable.

There’s much to be discussed when it comes to Gomez’ lupus diagnosis. It’s important to explain what Lupus is in the first place in order to really understand what she’d gone through. Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease which causes one’s body’s immune system to attack healthy cells. Symptoms of Lupus include:

• Muscle and joint pain 
• Fever 
• Rashes 
• Chest pain 
• Hair loss 
• Kidney problems 
• Fatigue 

As of right now, there is no cure for lupus. Nevertheless, symptoms can be managed with medicine and a healthy lifestyle. Treatments for the autoimmune disease include:

• Antimalarials 
• Biologics 
• Immunosuppressants 
• Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) 
• Steroids

At least 5 million people worldwide have a form of Lupus. And yet, when you first think of lupus, you automatically think of Selena Gomez, and that’s because she’s been extremely open about her struggles with her disease since she first opened up about it in 2015, 2 years after she was first diagnosed. In an interview with Billboard in 2015, Gomez said, ‘I was diagnosed with lupus, and I’ve been through chemotherapy. That’s what my break was really about. I could’ve had a stroke. I wanted so badly to say, ‘You guys have no idea. I’m in chemotherapy… I locked myself away until I was confident and comfortable again.’ A year later, she told GQ, ‘I got diagnosed with lupus. My mom had a very public miscarriage. So I had to cancel my tour. I needed time to just be okay.’ Another year later, she told Today, ‘I would get fevers, headaches. I would get fatigue. But I always just kept going. I kind of ignored it, to be honest…I don’t think I made the right decisions because I didn’t accept it. And that’s extremely selfish, and at the same time, really just unnecessary. I’m not really proud of that.’ In 2021, she told GQ of her struggles with mental health struggles caused by Lupus,‘I don’t even know what they really believed I was doing—drugs, alcohol, running around, partying. The narrative was so nasty.’

There’s to be said regarding the matter. It took Gomez a very long time to take her health seriously, and you might’ve judge her for it. If you’re a real hater, you might STILL be judging her for her not-so-great decisions in the past. As someone who’s struggled with their health, however, I totally understood where she was coming from. I empathized with her. The first few years following a diagnosis are the hardest. You try to keep up with your old life before your diagnosis because you’re in denial that there’s anything wrong with you. You then grieve the person that you were before your diagnosis because you know that you’re not the same person that you were before the illness. And finally, you embrace your new life as a person living with an illness that will affect you for the rest of your life. You even start seeing the beauty in it.

The first two years of her being diagnosed were the first stage of the process. Gomez did an entire world tour, the Revival tour in 2015, two years after her diagnosis. She was forced to cancel it altogether because it was taking a toll on her health. That was when the public was making assumptions about her, thinking that she was on drugs or consuming too much alcohol. Even after she opened up about her lupus diagnosis, the public just couldn’t get enough of assuming she was an addict. It was as though they urged her to be one. The media certainly couldn’t get enough blaming drugs and substance abuse for her problems. It’s also important to note that this was happening in the midst of Gomez’ on-and-off relationship with Justin Bieber. He was blamed for her troubles too. After all, love is a drug too, right In all seriousness, though, it’s all just a sad reality. Journalism doesn’t make money out of facts. Instead, they make money out of creating drama out of a facade that’s not even there.

The fact of the matter is, there is nothing more important in life than your health. When you have a diagnosis such as lupus, epilepsy, or any other chronic and/or autoimmune disease, everything else comes second to your health. You can’t be a good employees and/or entrepreneur without your health. You can’t be a good romantic partner without your health. You can’t be a good parent without your health. You can’t be a good friend without your health. I learned all that the hard way, and it seems to me that Gomez did too. She worked her a** off until her health got the best of her. She continued to come back to an old love that was obviously not good for her mental health, as well as her physical health, and he ended up hurting her by getting married to someone else just two months after their breakup. Gomez’ hit song, ‘Lose You To Love Me’ was inspired by that specific time in her life.

In a most recent interview with Vanity Fair, Gomez opened up about her health struggles even further. She said, ‘I haven’t ever said this but I unfortunately can’t carry my own children. I have a lot of medical issues that would put my life and the baby’s in jeopardy. That was something I had to grieve for a while. I find it a blessing that there are wonderful people willing to do surrogacy or adoption, which are both huge possibilities for me. It made me really thankful for the other outlets for people who are dying to be moms. I’m one of those people.’

For a woman to hear the news that she can’t bear children for reasons that are beyond her control is heartbreaking. There was a time where I didn’t know if I could ever get pregnant due to the endless amount of seizures I had per day everyday for years, as well the anti-seizure medications that was prescribed to me that wouldn’t make it safe for me to get pregnant. No medication seemed to have helped me. In fact, they made my condition worse. Hence, I decided to take matters into my own hands and stop relying solely on what doctors told me when it came to managing my illness. I stopped in taking medications altogether and have managed the illness naturally. This lifestyle isn’t something I’m promoting or encouraging. It’s just something that works for me, but it’s not for everyone. Not everyone can afford to live an all-natural lifestyle in managing their illnesses.

Selena Gomez couldn’t afford to do that, and it seemed that she tried to do so for years until her body just said, ‘NO MORE!’ It’s great to know that she’s open to becoming a mother in other ways other than the one women strive for. Adoption or surrogacy doesn’t make a woman any less of a mother than the one who birthed her children. I’m glad that Gomez knows that for herself. Her own mother, Mandy Teefy, who had Gomez when she was just 16 years old, was adopted too. And it hasn’t stopped the singer and actress from living her life and finally getting her ‘happily ever after’. After more than a year of dating, Gomez confirmed that she was engaged to Benny Blanco. Ironically, he was friends with Bieber and even produced several of his songs throughout his career. Blanco and Gomez previously collaborated on the 2019 song, ‘I Can’t Get Enough’, alongside Tainy and J Baldvin

And speaking of friends…

It’s very unlikely that Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber are friends. After all, Hailey is married to Selena’s longtime toxic ex-boyfriend. In a previous interview with Zane Lowe, Justin admitted so himself. He said, ‘I was like, ‘I’m not in a place to be faithful,’ and all this sort of stuff that I wanted to be, but I just wasn’t there yet.’ In my previous relationship, I went off and just went crazy and went wild, just was being reckless,” he says. “This time, I took the time to really build myself and focus on me and try to make the right decisions and all that sort of stuff. And yeah, I got better.’ Hailey herself opened up about the situation on the ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast in 2023. When asked by Alex Cooper whether or not Justin cheated on Selena with her, she said, ‘No, not at one time. When him and I started hooking up, or anything of that sort, he was not in any relationship. It’s not my character to mess with someone’s relationship, I was raised better than that. I understand how it looks from the outside, but that was a situation where I know for a fact that it was the right thing for them to close that door, but of course, there’s a very long history there and I respect that a lot. I don’t want to talk on either one of their behalf’s.’

Only they actually know whether it’s all true or not. Nevertheless, it’s pretty safe to say that Gomez and Hailey are at least friendly with one another. In 2023, they posed together at the Annual Academy Museum Gala. Photographer Tyrell Hampton posted the photo of them together and captioned it, ‘Plot twist.’ And plot twist it was, indeed. The duo had been embroiled in controversy for years over allegations that Justin cheated on Selena in 2018. That was how Hailey became the most hated person in America, and that was what Justin Baldoni allegedly meant when he texted ‘That’s what we need’ in a text that also includes an article headline of Hailey.

The history between Selena, Hailey and Justin began in 2011. Jelena, as Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber’s fandom call the former couple, first began dating in December 2010. They confirmed their relationship in February 2011 when they posed together at the Oscars. She later opened up to Seventeen magazine of their relationship, ‘I don’t like hiding. I do like to keep certain things to myself, but at the end of the day, I’m 18 and I’m going to fall in love. I’m going to hang out with people and I’m going to explore myself, and I’m OK with that.’ A few months later, Hailey, then 14 years old tweeted, ‘I’m for sure 100% team #Jelena.’ She then proceeded to call them a ‘teenage dream’. She proceeded to show her undying support of the couple in the months that followed.

Selena and Justin were very much on-and-off in the years they were together, and during their off periods, Justin became involved with Hailey. In 2016, the now married couple labeled their relationship as ‘not exclusive.’ In an interview with GQ that year, Justin said of Hailey, ‘What if Hailey ends up being the girl I’m gonna marry, right? If I rush into anything, if I damage her, then it’s always gonna be damaged. It’s really hard to fix wounds like that. It’s so hard … I just don’t want to hurt her.’ But that’s exactly what he ended up doing. Following their breakup in 2016, Hailey opened up in a Vogue interview about what had happened between them. She said, ‘Negative things happened that we still need to talk about and work through. There was a period where if I walked into a room, he would walk out.’

By the following year, Gomez and Justin were back together. However, shortly after they seen together at Justin’s father’s wedding, news broke that they broke up yet again. Months later, he was back with Hailey and engaged. That was how ‘Lose You To Love Me’ was born. ‘In two months you replaced us like it was easy,’ she sang. The song (un)intentionally created a media frenzy. To say that Hailey was hated would be an understatement. She couldn’t post a single thing on social media without Jelena fans somehow assuming that she was somehow shading Selena. Every time she’d go out of her house for even a coffee break, photographers and journalists always made sure to ask her about her relationship with Justin and Selena. She couldn’t seem to escape the bullying. And following Gomez’s release of ‘Look At Her Now’, Hailey, yet again, was dragged by Jelena stans and was accused of throwing shade at the singer. That was when Gomez had enough and finally said something. ‘I am grateful for the response that the song is getting. I’m so grateful. However, I do not stand for women tearing women down. I will never, ever be by that, so please be kind to everyone. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, if you’re my fans don’t be rude to anybody, please. Don’t go off and say things that you just feel in the moment.’

Things were fairly quiet until 2022, when fans thought that Selena was shading Hailey on social media following a simple video on TikTok that she captioned, ‘get ready with me.’ She later commented on the video, ‘This is why I believe in taking care of your mental health. Guys no idea what I did but I really am sorry. Zero bad intention. Deleting soon.’ The video didn’t mention by name, but because of its timing, fans speculated the singer was somehow mocking the model. And even after the two were seen posing for photos together Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ 2nd annual gala, the hate didn’t end. It got so bad that by 2023, Hailey was receiving death threats online. Selena took to Instagram and wrote, ‘Hailey Bieber reached out to me and let me know that she has been receiving death threats and such hateful negativity. This isn’t what I stand for. No one should have to experience hate or bullying. I’ve always advocated for kindness and really want this to all stop.’ A few months later, Hailey posted on Instagram asking fans to not spread hate towards Selena. She wrote, ‘If you’re leaving mean or rude comments on my behalf on anyone’s posts just know that I don’t want that, nor do I ever or will I ever support or condone hateful, mean, or nasty comments. Doing that is not supporting me. If you are participating in that you are a part of a culture that I want no part of. Please be nice or don’t say anything.’

While appearing on ‘The Circut’ podcast, she told host Emily Chang, ‘I don’t think that this is about me, Hailey Bieber, and Selena Gomez. This is not about this pitting between two women — it’s about the vile, disgusting hatred that can come from completely made-up and twisted, and perpetuated narratives that can be really dangerous. Time and time again I say there is no issue and it’s so disappointing that people still behave this way over a man.’ This is a very, very important quote said by Hailey Bieber. It’s one that we should all remember. But it’s especially one that Jelena fans should take note of. These two women don’t hate each other. It’s evident in how they present themselves on social media. It’s the outside world that can’t seem to move on; who create drama out of something that isn’t event there in the first place.

Both Gomez and Bieber have so much to celebrate. Gomez is finally getting the recognition she deserves for her work as an actress. It was a long time coming, considering she started her career as a teenager, and now she’s a 32 year old woman. She has a business, Rare Beauty, that she founded in 2020 and made her a billionaire, she’s engaged to be married, and after years and years of struggle, her lupus is now in remission. Bieber’s career as a model is thriving. She, too, has a business, Rhodes, which has been getting much praise from her customers and users. And now, she’s finally become a mother to her and Justin’s son, Jack Blues. They both have moved on from the hurt caused by Justin Bieber in their respective ways, and yet, the public is still putting them against each other and creating drama out of something that isn’t even there – to this very day, even after both women have urged fans to stop the chaos. Most recently, it was when Gomez posted on Instagram that she and Benny Blanco were engaged during the holiday season. That particular post got 20 million (!) likes. One of them was Hailey Bieber who ‘liked’ it. And again, Jelena fans made comments like, ‘she’s just happy Selena can finally leave her alone.’ WHY? Why do people just assume that Justin Bieber is ever on Selena Gomez’s mind anymore? Why can’t two strong women show support for one another without the outside world creating chaos out of it?

It’s not just Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber that are put against each other. Women in general are pitted against each other, and that’s because the media and journalism makes the most amount of dollars out of drama and lies rather than the truth. It’s the case in real-life too. Regular women who have regular jobs and live regular lives are pitted against each other as well. Somehow, we’re always in a competition. No matter what we do or don’t do, we’re constantly judged. We’re made to believe we’re less than. We’re constantly conditioned to believe that women are incapable of achieving greatness without constantly trying to one-up each other. This has become a ‘machine’ of its own. Gomez and Bieber are just one example, but there are so many more female celebrities out there are who are pitted against each other. Nicki Minaj and Cardi B are another example. To put their ‘feud’ to rest, Minaj tweeted in 2018, ‘Ok you guys, let’s focus on positive things only from here on out. We’re all so blessed. I know this stuff is entertaining & funny to a lot of people but I won’t be discussing this nonsense anymore. Thank you for the support & encouragement year after year. Love you.’ This internet mantra is harmful and dangerous. environment that makes it tough for women to work together or support each other. Women are constantly battling to prove themselves, and if they show traits typically seen as “masculine,” like confidence and assertiveness, they’re immediately labeled as a threat.

If there’s anything we can all learn from Selena Gomez is that, we, as women, should celebrate one another and be happy for each other’s wins and successes. And it’s not just through the smear campaign against Hailey Bieber. At the Golden Globes this past Sunday, Gomez showed such grace to handling her loss to Zoe Saldana, her co-star in ‘Emilia Perez’. Many expected Gomez to be upset or annoyed over not winning, but Gomez proved everyone wrong as she was overjoyed with Saldaña winning her award for Best Supporting Actress. Gomez stood up and jumped up and down with happiness for her co-star as Saldaña graced the stage to receive her award. THIS is exactly what we need to see more of – in media and in our daily, regular lives.

The End…