Entertainment

Selena Gomez Doesn't Lip Sync, OK?

by Kadeen Griffiths

I would say that Selena Gomez is making a comeback but, to me, she never really left. In the last year alone, the singer has gone from being largely known for her on-off relationship with Justin Bieber to being known for giving us both a hit album with Revival and more personal honesty in the form of her open discussion of her lupus diagnosis than most celebrities are willing to share, even with their adoring public. Gomez has been a personal hero to a lot of people for a long time, and even more so recently, so it comes as no surprise that she's unwilling to let anyone drag her down anymore. Such was the case when Gomez reportedly slammed claims that she was lip synching during the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show on Tuesday, a claim that was particularly egregious as it took place in Gomez's own home. (You know, if you consider social media an Internet home.)

The incident went down on an image that the Victoria's Secret official Instagram account posted before Gomez's performance on Tuesday night. The image showed Gomez standing with her back to the camera, on stage looking out, and getting ready to shut it down. One unlucky commenter reportedly joked, "She sings live?" To which Gomez reportedly responded, "Yes, I f*cking sing live." Her comment didn't go unnoticed by fans, who have blown up the comment section on the photograph laughing at Gomez's excellent stand against haters and supporting her right to call those haters out.

The incident, if it went down as reported, doesn't seem to have made enough of a blip on Gomez's radar for her to address it on any of her other social media platforms, and that's all right. After all, in Gomez's own words from a Time interview in 2015, "I just don’t care about the noise anymore... I need my life to not be dictated by these people that I don’t even know. That, believe it or not, was at the top of my list." The singer has been candid about how the words of hates have made her depressed in the past, made her doubt herself, and driven her crazy, and to see her at a place in her life when she can put those haters on blast and then go about her day as happily as if it had never happened is truly heartwarming.

Because the sad thing about being a celebrity is that you are always going to be judged on a wide scale by people who don't know you, and who you don't know, who think they're being clever on the Internet under the warm blanket of relative anonymity. That's a tough thing to handle in real life on a small scale, let alone in the Hollywood universe on a worldwide scale. Knowing that Gomez was hurting all of this time hurts me as well, because the bullying that happened to her could happen to anyone — not in the papers (I should hope), but in general. Gomez's struggles reminds us all that we are human, and that celebrities are humans, too. That can be easy to forget when you're watching them on TV, or looking up facts on them on the Internet.

At the end of the day, sure, Gomez could have chosen to ignore the reported hater without even dropping a comment. But why should she have to? Taking the high road when someone is denying your ability to do the fundamental thing that you work hard at every day is hard to do, and I don't blame Gomez for her reported comment. I'm too busy cheering her on.