Selena Gomez Knows Which Leeches to Cut

Fame is a parasite farm. The moment the money comes in, the checks clear, and your face is somewhere people recognize, they appear: grinning, attentive, always around when there’s a table to sit at and drinks to be had. Not there for you. There for the proximity, the reflected light, the off chance they’ll get a quote they can use or a room they can sleep in. Parasites dressed as friends.

Selena Gomez gave an interview at the start of 2017 saying she’d spent the previous year figuring out who was actually in her corner and who was just feeding off the scenery. Her conclusion was the obvious one, the one you know in your gut long before you say it out loud: cut them. All of them. No sentiment, no gradual distancing, no one final conversation you’ll regret. Just gone.

It sounds simple. It isn’t. The parasites are specifically adapted to resist removal—they’re charming, they show up at the right moments, they’re good at making you feel guilty for suspecting them. That’s the whole mechanism. Selena had the good sense, or maybe just the exhaustion, to stop caring about the guilt and start caring about her own sanity instead. Selena is, and I say this without irony, the queen of us all.