Selena Gomez is accepting herself the way she is! The singer-actress took to her Instagram Stories on January 22, 2024, and shared two bikini photos — one from the past and one more recently — reflecting on her body transformation over the years.
The Only Murders In the Building actress wrote alongside the first image, “Today I realized I will never look like this again.” The second picture featured Selena wearing another bikini, from a more recent outing, writing, “I’m not perfect, but I am proud to be who I am… Sometimes I forget it’s ok to be me.”
This isn’t the first time Selena has addressed her body image publicly — as she spoke to her fans in a TikTok that her lupus medication affects her weight in February 2023.
“[When I’m taking it, I] tend to hold a lot of water weight, and that happens very normally,” she said during the livestream. “When I’m off of it, I tend to lose weight. I just wanted to say and encourage anyone out there who feels any sort of shame for exactly what they’re going through, and no one knows the real story.”
The former Disney Channel actress was diagnosed with lupus in 2014. During a March 2023 episode of Apple TV+ series Dear..., the Rare Beauty founder spoke further about her experience with lupus and body-shaming trolls.
Explaining that after she was first diagnosed with the disease, she “didn’t quite understand what that meant” at the time. “I knew I had an autoimmune disease, it was just my body fighting itself on the inside,” she said. “And that was the most surreal part because I had never felt fatigue, I was young, I felt completely fine. So hearing from a doctor that, ‘Oh, you could’ve had a stroke onstage, you could’ve died,’ it was a lot.”
Due to her weight fluctuating due to the medications side-effects, she found herself being attacked online over her body and physical appearance. “It was like they couldn’t wait to find a thing to bring me down,” she said. “I lied. I would go online and post a picture of myself and I would say, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not accepting what you’re saying,’ all the while being in the room posting that crying my eyes out, ’cause nobody deserves to hear those things.”
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