Selena Gomez Hates Feeling a ‘Tad Bitter’ About Comments on Her Weight

Selena Gomez isn’t afraid to talk about the double standard when it comes to comments about her appearance. On this week’s episode of Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast, Gomez lamented that she gets “a tad bitter” when people mention her weight, noting that those comments are always aimed at women.

Appearing with fiancé Benny Blanco — who said he never reads too deeply into what people say about him online because he’d rather “free-fall through life” without knowing what anyone else thinks — Gomez said her take is very different. “I was also going to point out that women have it much worse,” she said. “From my perspective, it’s pretty wild, and I think this isn’t news to anybody, that obviously women have a lot more intense feelings from their appearance to what they are wearing to everything.”

The scrutiny is so intense that Gomez said it gets in her head when she’s getting ready for the red carpet. “When I get prepared for an event, 90 percent of the time I’m just like, ‘I just hope I can take the picture and sit down.’” Gomez said, “It’s the character that gets judged, it’s the way I’m not white enough, I’m not Mexican enough. There’s just so many different things that come up in my face that I can’t help but see. But I fall victim to looking at things, and it really doesn’t add to your life, but it’s just so difficult. From the choices of people you date, it’s like nobody cares about those kind of things with men. They’re just like, ‘yeah, the did that, they said that.’”

Gomez, 32, said the most frequent unsolicited comments she sees are about her weight, with “everyone” online having “something to say” about it. “My weight’s a big one too,” she said. “It’s really making me sad and — not even sad cause, I’m not a victim, I just think it’s made me a tad bitter, and I feel really guilty for saying that, but it’s true.” In the past, Gomez has shared that the medicine she takes to combat the chronic autoimmune disorder lupus can cause weight fluctuations.

In November, Gomez hit back at negative posts about her posture at a red carpet event promoting her Oscar-nominated film Emilia Perez, after some TikTok users suggested she was trying to hide her body with poses in which her hands were positioned across her stomach. “This makes me sick,” Gomez wrote in the comments of the speculation. “I have SEBO [SIBO] in my small intestine. It flares up. I don’t care that I don’t look like a stick figure. I don’t have that body. End of story. No I am NOT a victim. I’m just human.”

As she’s revealed before, the singer also told Shetty that she takes mental health breaks from being online and “most of the time” she ignores the haters, noting again that she doesn’t have social apps on her phone. “So there are ways to combat it,” she said. “I’m not like, ‘I hate it.’ I understand the power of what social media is, it’s just tricky.”

Watch Blanco and Gomez on the Shetty podcast below.