A Very Serious, Feminist Reading of the Hailey vs. Selena Drama

At this point, one does not need any proof of the lasting impact and snowballing outrage a 10-second TikTok can generate. Such was the case for the Hailey Bieber video heard 'round the world. For those of you who need to catch up:

1. An early January production from Hailey Bieber featured Hailey (wife of one Justin), Kendall Jenner, and Justine Skye lipsyncing a trending audio that mocks an unnamed “she.” (To quote: “I’m not saying she deserved it, but I’m saying that God’s timing is always right.”)

2. Many fans came to one conclusion: There’s nobody else in the world that Hailey & co. could possibly be shading besides Selena Gomez, who was going through a rough body shaming saga at the time.

3. Now, we are approaching month three of a Hailey Bieber pile-on, which is tinged with some pretty outdated sexist rhetoric that continues to escalate unchecked.

The dynamic between Hailey and Selena has been under intense scrutiny since 2018, when Hailey and Justin tied the knot a few short months after Justin and Selena officially called it quits on their epically long and twisted on-again, off-again romance. In the years after the Bieber nuptials, many fans (doing a whole lot of projecting, mind you) identified with Selena’s assumed role as the wronged ex-girlfriend, and the stars themselves occasionally threw a little fuel on the flames.

Now, we may finally be at the tail end of Selena and Hailey’s “feud” that, at its height consisted of weird coincidences and vague social media activity from both parties that sort of…kind of…maybe...honestly, we don't even really know for sure... referenced each other? Please dissect that on your own time. What's not up for debate, however, is that this latest episode is the most extreme era of the alleged beef so far. After Hailey Bieber received literal death threats, the two women thankfully brokered a tentative ceasefire via their IG stories, exchanging peacemaking follow-for-follows and even a bikini-photo like.

As the dust begins to settle, it’s time to turn the spotlight onto this drama’s third participant (and no, it’s not Justin). The public's response to Hailey and Selena’s perceived slights has been nothing short of...unhinged. Like some sort of overenthusiastic gladiator battle crowd, every mention of one woman triggers the takedown of the other.

I see a bizarre remix of the Madonna-whore complex playing out in the Hailey vs. Selena comments, Twitter threads, and trending TikToks. You know that age-old Freudian logic that mandates women must be either Madonnas (chaste, pure, worthy of respect) or whores (hypersexual, evil, not wifey material)? In this case, the pop consensus is that the married party is the stalker seductress who wrecked the teen dream couple of our youth, and Selena is the irrefutably perfect, jilted ex-girlfriend, who Justin could never *possibly* transcend, partner-wise. How else would you explain all the videos that nitpick the way he behaves around his wife and romanticize old Jelena-era clips?

While it’s far from my burden to defend a couple of uber-wealthy starlets, bearing witness to these tired attitudes left me with the same nagging icky feeling I get from watching internalized misogyny rear its head with this year’s “Vanilla Wife” trend. It’s a frankly delusional fantasy where creators deem themselves “the one that got away," while simultaneously dissing a sometimes-imaginary "Vanilla Wife" with whom the man in question is begrudgingly in a relationship. Like clockwork, the Hailey vs. Selena fiasco prompted a fresh version of these taunts, in the form of "You may be his Hailey, but I'll always be his Selena" videos.

Guys, it is 2023, so can someone explain to me why we are still falling prey to these toxic, imagined binaries that pit one woman in petty competition against another, comparing every little thing about them, from their looks to their follower counts? Forgive me if I'm taking this all too seriously, but the narratives we create about celebrities' intimate lives (lives that, I may add, we don't really know the truth of) reveal *a lot* about our culture's treatment of women at large.

Popular TikTok creator Fumi focuses her content on interpersonal relationships and personal development, and she's taken a deeper look into the Vanilla Wife phenomenon on her page. Her theory for why these types of videos gain traction? It's a communal coping mechanism reacting to the fact that men can be...not great.

"There are a lot more women who are experiencing varying levels of heartbreak, and identify primarily with that," Fumi explains. "That's where this Vanilla Wife trend comes in. Because you identify more with that heartbreak aspect, in an effort to cope or rationalize, you're casting yourself as the one who got away."

This is nothing new, of course. If we compare this situation to the Angelina vs. Jennifer feud of the aughts, what’s different is that tabloids and online blogs are no longer the only ones shaping the narrative. With a little help from the algorithm, we all get the chance to throw tomatoes, with equal opportunity to gain social clout.

"TikTok is still very much a platform where anyone can really go viral,” says Fumi. “It's not a platform that prioritizes who you follow or bigger creators all of the time. What that does sometimes is incentivize bandwagoning—if something is taking off, if a lot of videos are going viral, then you'll just see the same video over and over."

Danisha Carter is another social commentator whose insights have earned her a loyal following of nearly 2 million on TikTok. From her POV, the Hailey Hate Train has created a dangerous echo chamber that obscures self-awareness. "TikTok incentivizes people to be very aggressive and very hateful,” Danisha says.

Justin’s absence from all of this drama is also noteworthy. Young women online who are making and consuming this content are hyper-aware of conversations about unrealistic expectations, and unfair double standards. Yet, this scandal allowed the man at the center of it all to remain totally unscathed.

“There's a really distasteful irony with the cognitive dissonance that freaks me out as well,” Danisha adds. "We have this conversation constantly happening about how women are pitted against women, or how women are always slammed down much harder than men. We question how things spiral out of control and why celebrities get off social media. How do we get all of these conclusions, and the same people seemingly who ask these questions turn around and engage in the behavior that causes them?”

It’s beyond time we start holding this genre of public discourse—and these familiar misogynistic tropes—to some serious scrutiny. The next time you're inspired to fire off in a comment section or gleefully consume a TikTok about a star’s pain, maybe take a breath. What do the attacks and outrage that “superficial” celeb dramas inspire indicate on a broader level about our culture's treatment of women? The meme-ification of a woman's experience is just another way to dehumanize them. Consuming this type of content with a little more mindfulness seems like an easy way to avoid perpetuating old sexist dichotomies that won't go away unless we collectively choose to banish them.

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