Selena Gomez covers the latest issue of Vogue to promote her new Spanish-language album, Revelación. She recorded it in lockdown because she was trying to keep busy, although in the Vogue piece, she fully admits that for much of the time, she was just watching CNN, binge-watching The Undoing and Bridgerton, and eating. One of the best lines in the Vogue piece about her lockdown life: “Every day she made sure to change into a different pair of sweatpants.” Girl, HOW?? I wear the same pair of sweatpants for two or three days. Next she’s gonna tell us that she wore a bra throughout lockdown too. You can read the full Vogue piece here. Some highlights:
What else she did in lockdown: “I can’t function unless I’m working. The whole point of quarantine for me personally was just to stop, and I have a hard time doing that. And my main focus was really politics, and making sure I took it seriously.”
Where she gets her news: She gets her news mostly from “an older woman that I’m really close with,” she tells me—someone whose identity she’d prefer to keep private. “And I watch CNN, but I try not to do it too much, because I’m empathetic to the point that I’ll cry at anything. I cried a lot during quarantine, just for the pain of everyone else.”She had never voted before 2020: “I just had no idea. Either I didn’t care or I just was not recognizing the importance of who’s running our country, and that’s really scary to think about.”
Seeking treatment in 2016 and 2018. “I knew I couldn’t go on unless I learned to listen to my body and mind when I really needed help,” she says. She still has a hard time with late-night anxiety: the kind where you forget how to sleep and start thinking about what you want, what you have to do to get there. “And then I start thinking about my personal life, and I’m like, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ and it becomes this spiral.”
She no longer looks at Instagram. “I woke up one morning and looked at Instagram, like every other person, and I was done. I was tired of reading horrible things. I was tired of seeing other people’s lives. After that decision, it was instant freedom. My life in front of me was my life, and I was present, and I could not have been more happy about it.”
Her paternal grandparents were undocumented. “It wasn’t for any reason that I didn’t share it before. It’s just that as I started to see the world for what it is, all these things started to be like light bulbs going off.” Her grandparents came to Texas in a “back-of-the-truck situation,” Gomez tells me, “and it took them 17 years to get citizenship. I remember that being such a huge deal. My grandpa was working construction, hiring hundreds of people, and still they were living on the edge, covering up how scary it was.”
Seeing the images from the Capitol riot. “It felt like someone was pissing all over our history. It’s just anarchy. There’s been a complete division.”
She re-reads Rick Warren’s book The Purpose-Driven Life a lot: “I’m very, very spiritual. I believe in God, but I’m not religious. I’ve been a Christian for a while now. I don’t talk about it too much—I want to, but it’s gotten a bad rep. I just want to make it clear that I love being able to have my faith, and believe in what I believe in, and that truly is what gets me through.”
Last fall, Hecate wrote the story on how Selena was voting for the first time ever in the 2020 election, and I remember finding some of the old articles about all of the times that Selena talked about voting or participated in GOTV campaigns over the years. It’s kind of insane that she didn’t vote in 2012 or 2016, not to mention she didn’t vote in any Senate, House or governor’s race. I understand that it’s never too late to vote for the first time, but honestly, I’m disappointed that it took her this long to do the bare minimum as a citizen, as a Latina voter and as a woman.
As for her discussion about religion… she used to go to Hillsong, but I have no idea if she still does. Hillsong has been mired in scandal for months now and I wonder if that’s what “I want to, but it’s gotten a bad rep” is about. I don’t know – I’m fine with people talking about their faith, but if you feel like you can’t talk about your faith without proselytizing on behalf of your creepy predator pastor, maybe that’s your problem and not mine.
Cover & IG courtesy of Vogue.
People like her are the one I blame for Trump. in 2016 there was a large amount of people who DIDN’T vote, nearly half if I remember right, Voting is important and vital to a functioning democracy. I’m a avid voter, I never missed even a school election lol. I also believe, uncharitably probably but I’m definitely a b!tch, that if you were eligible to vote and chose not to vote I don’t want to hear you complaining. (ETA during his term and things like “he shouldn’t have been elected etc” )That’s just me though. It’s great she’s active now, people have to start somewhere. (did I mention I’m a b!tch?)
I absolutely agree with you. I voted the very next election after I got my citizenship – how, especially as a woman one would not want to vote? But I think especially in the case of Selena, this is an example of what the priorities have always for so many people in America – making money, not making a society. As long as I have a big house and a nice car, I’m good and everything else is not my business.
Congratulations on your citizenship and I love that you vote. We are all invested in our democracy even if you hide behind wealth and youth.
@HeatherC —I completely agree; her grandparents were undocumented so she is aware of the situation in this country, yet she never bothered to vote before 2020? This is just insane….It is best I stop!
I am like you but because of my father, who is a black man! I’ve never EVER underestimated my right to vote; so many people fought for some to be able to vote in this country
I’m going to get in trouble for this but she comes off as a hypocritical idiot that finally woke up when faced with another term of Voldemort as president.
She’s nearly 30 which means she was a grown adult who had lived her whole life up to that point as a disabled (her lupus and kidney) Latina and still didn’t vote. Thank you for growing but girl – You get credit for 2020 and side eye for everything before.
Right? A woman. A Latina woman. A Latina woman with serious health issues. A Latin woman with serious health issues and family members who dealt with the hardships of being undocumented for nearly 2 decades.
My God, woman, HOOOOOWWWW did you not vote before 2020!?!?
I’m glad she finally did, and I hope like her, many more people have realized that their vote does count, and it DOES matter who is in charge.
She was a mess though. Lupus, kidney transplant, bipolar disorder, anxiety and depression, dealing with Justin (lol) and was undergoing pretty intense therapy regularly. Rumours of drugs and alcohol too.
Even now she gets her political information relayed to her, she has no access to social media, lives with a bunch of people, including her grandparents that keep an eye on her. And she’s supposed to be in a much better state now.
It’s not hard to imagine her simply being burdened with everything and didn’t have the capacity to vote-I see that a lot in my field.
She was such a shell, and in some ways, still a shell.
I’ll side eye her for her voting campaigns but her not voting is totally not the same as a vapid woman who doesn’t care.
I just read the VF article on Hillsong. Seems like they’re trying their hardest to be the new Scientology.
While I agree that Hillsong sounds pretty creepy, I think Selena’s comment could have also been more general. A lot of millennials and Gen Z kids in the US have a stereotyped opinion that all Christians are ultra-conservative evangelicals because those are the loudest brand of Christians that make it into the headlines. In my son’s middle school son, only a handful of kids are involved in organized religion, and most of the other kids are a generation or two removed from organized religion. They really only know about Christianity through hearsay, and don’t understand that there are many very different interpretations and practices of Christianity.
My son avoids mentioning that he is Christian because when kids find out that our family goes to a church, he gets peppered with questions like: Why do you think the Earth is flat? Why don’t you believe in evolution? (They don’t believe my son when he says that we believe in science too.) Why do you hate gay people? (20% of our congregation is queer, including members of our church council and several former pastors.) Don’t you worry that your minister will molest you? (Our pastor is a grandmother — but I suppose it’s theoretically possible.)
It’s embarrassing but not unusual. People in their late teens and 20s have historically been one of the least reliable voting blocks, regardless of race, gender and/or socioeconomic status.
Well, she’s voting now.
It’s wild to me how massive amounts of wealth can insulate you from the effects of not voting. Selena is a prime example of this apathetic mind set (prior to 2020 At least). Wild. Just wild.
Well I’m glad she’s politically awake now! Hope she stays that way from now on. I also wish her well in health both mental and physical. Having an anxiety disorder is no joke.
It’s not great that her first time voting was in 2020, but better late than never I guess. At least she acknowledges that not voting was bad. And yes, everyone should be voting, but I also get that there are reasons that people don’t vote. Perhaps, she thought her vote wouldn’t really matter since she lives in a blue state. Some can’t get time off. We really should have a federal holiday on Election Day. I know some people don’t vote because they don’t feel informed on the policies or candidates. On the flip side, I remember in college my housemate told me she just randomly picked a name during Super Tuesday, she had no clue who she voted for. I also have a republican aunt who will vote republican down ballot even though she has no clue what the republicans even stand for. Can’t articulate why she is a republican. One day she decided that she is republican and has voted that way ever since, and never misses an election (unless she is abroad, cause she doesn’t know about absentee voting). She’s not smart nor a critical thinker.
I really like this. It seems like Selena is in a really good place now so three cheers for that.