The Real Reason Selena Gomez Fans Don't Like Benny Blanco

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | December 13, 2023 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | December 13, 2023 |

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a Selena Gomez fan. While I am a member of the Disney Channel generation, I didn’t have cable growing up, so I didn’t actually have the Disney Channel. I did not watch Wizards of Waverly Place except at sleepovers and never listened to her music. I also wasn’t into Justin Bieber, so, you know, missed that whole thing. I follow Gomez on Instagram like everyone else and enjoy Only Murders in the Building (though I’m really there for Steve and Martin), and that’s about it.

But we all know that Gomez’s true fan base is loyal as hell, and her relationship with them is sometimes complicated. Her relationship with fame, in general, is complicated, which is understandable for a former child star, and therein lies the problem: it’s like her loyal fans, who were children themselves when Gomez got famous, haven’t aged past the Disney days, and they don’t want her to either.

Case in point: Benny Blanco. The music producer-come-internet-chef has been dating Gomez for six months, and her fans are not happy about it. She went on a bit of an Instagram comment tirade last week, defending the relationship and calling Blanco “absolutely everything in my heart” and “the best thing that’s ever happened to me” in response to fan account speculation.

Selena Gomez defends relationship with Benny Blanco:

“Then why has he been the best thing that’s ever happened to me … he’s still better than anyone I’ve been with. Facts” pic.twitter.com/7CsJoL6Qck

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) December 7, 2023

On the surface, the backlash seems to be coming from Blanco’s former association with Gomez’s ex, Justin Bieber. He produced Bieber’s song “Lonely,” and had a friendship with him, then in 2020 he did an interview on the Zach Sang Show and said Bieber wasn’t “one of those cookie-cutter pop artists.”

“Like, you know, they’re like, ‘This is my new single, and here’s my makeup line,’” he said, which fans interpreted as shade directed at Gomez, since she had just launched Rare Beauty, and a year prior she and Blanco collaborated on her song “I Can’t Get Enough,” and its music video.

Even if that comment was directed at Gomez at the time, it clearly doesn’t matter to them now. The real reason I think her fans don’t like him for her? He’s ugly.

“HE IS SO UNHANDSOME,” one fan commented on a picture of the couple. “HE IS SO NOOOO WHY? SELENA YOU ARE GORGEOUS AS WHAT THE HELL,” wrote another. One armchair psychologist said Gomez “has low esteem sadly,” and complained, “There’s so many intelligent, talented, handsome clean men that want her but she always chooses the musty, problematic ones.”

It’s the “handsome clean” part that got me. I guess Blanco’s looks don’t match Gomez’s “Rare Beauty.”

The unfortunate byproduct of being a female child star is being infantilized into adulthood, and it seems to me that Gomez has internalized that infantilization and started to believe it. Her fans watched her grow up and listened to her open up about her mental health struggles, and now they think she needs their protection, so much so that they don’t trust her to make her own choices about who she’s attracted to and who she wants to date. They’re still obsessed with the relationship she was in when she was 18. Now she’s 31 and she’s still coddled. I think that coddling in part explains her use of social media. When her fans react to something she does, she throws a fit. I mean, listen, I would be annoyed with them calling my boyfriend ugly (actually no I wouldn’t because I like ugly guys, but this is a hypothetical situation), but I would also ignore them because they’re children on the internet.

Gomez is, sadly, also still a child on the internet. Since her defensive run she’s been on a stories spree, posting black and white candids with Blanco.

She also posted a kind of apology.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Selena Gomez Brasil (@selenagomezbr2.0)

I think this was a mistake, but responding the way she did in the first place was also a mistake. All of this is a mistake of putting too much trust in her fans and of taking them too seriously, which indicates that she takes herself too seriously. It’s time for all of us, including Selena, to grow up.