She’s so rare! Since rising to stardom, Selena Gomez has candidly discussed her journey with self-love and body positivity.
In 2015, the Texas native opened up about taking hateful messages from trolls and turning them into something special with her Revival album.
“I was getting a lot of hate for my body and ‘you’re gaining weight’ [commentary] and so I was in Mexico and I was just feeling all of this stuff and I would be lying to you if I said it didn’t kind of hurt my feelings, but I kind of channeled that into my music,” the singer told Extra TV at the time.
Gomez noted that Revival tracks “Survivors,” “Kill Em With Kindness” and “Rise” were her attempts to address the negativity she faced online. “It’s all geared towards me trying to be heard,” she noted, calling the album “the best thing that I’ve ever done in my whole career” at the time.
The Disney Channel alum later admitted that the body-shamers made her decide to take a step back from social media. “In reality, that’s just my truth. I fluctuate. It depends on what’s happening in my life,” she detailed on the “Giving Back Generation” podcast in 2019.
Gomez pointed out that her weight change came from various health issues, including lupus, kidney problems and high blood pressure. “That got to me big time,” she said about the hate she received from strangers. “I think for me, that really messed me up for a bit.”
After both The Good Fight and Peacock’s Saved by the Bell reboot poked fun at the performer’s health issues, her fans fought back in her defense — and so did she.
“I am not sure how writing jokes about organ transplants for television shows has become a thing but sadly it has apparently,” Gomez wrote via Twitter in August 2021. “I hope in the next writer’s room when one of these tasteless jokes are presented it’s called out immediately and doesn’t make it on air.”
She added: “My fans always have my back. LOVE YOU.”
Over the years, the Only Murders in the Building actress learned to drown out all the noise on social media.
“Being in the public eye from such an early age certainly comes with a lot of pressure. It’s hard to feel comfortable when you feel like everyone is watching, judging and commenting on the way you look,” she told Glamour UK in February 2022. “Self confidence is still something I work on daily, but when I stopped trying to conform to society’s unrealistic standards of beauty, my perspective entirely shifted.”
Keep scrolling to see more of Gomez’s most inspiring quotes about body positivity: