Selena Gomez has no interest in comparing her current body to her past self.
“Today, I realized I will never look like this again,” Gomez, 31, captioned a bikini photo from 2013 via her Instagram Story on Monday, January 22. In the pic, Gomez enjoyed a day by the water in a zebra-print bikini with gold chain accents, which she paired with black sunglasses.
She followed up the first Instagram Story photo with a more recent swimsuit snap, seemingly taken during her January 2023 New Year’s trip to Mexico with Brooklyn and Nicola Peltz Beckham. “I’m not perfect but I am proud to be who I am … sometimes I forget it’s OK to be me,” she wrote alongside the second pic, which featured her climbing up the side of a boat in a white bikini top and black bikini bottoms.
Gomez has become a champion for body positivity over the years with her candid quotes about health and wellness. In 2019, she revealed that her health can cause her weight to fluctuate. “I have lupus and deal with kidney issues and high blood pressure, so I deal with a lot of health issues and for me, that’s when I really started noticing more of the body image stuff,” Gomez said during an appearance on the “Giving Back Generation” podcast.
Gomez was diagnosed with lupus in 2014 and underwent a kidney transplant, with longtime friend Francia Raísa as her donor, three years later. In a February 2023 TikTok Live, the Only Murders in the Building star explained that her lupus medication causes her to “hold a lot of water weight.”
She continued: “And then when I’m off of [my medication], 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 for and nobody knows the real story — I just want people to know that you’re beautiful and you’re wonderful and, yeah, maybe we have days where we feel like s–t but I would much rather be healthy and take care of myself.”
Despite her self-encouragement, Gomez has admitted to sometimes letting negative social media comments get to her. “I lied. I would go online and I would post a picture of myself and say [the negative comments] don’t matter, I’m not accepting what you’re saying — all the while being in the room posting that, crying my eyes out, because nobody deserves to hear those things,” she said during a March 2023 episode of Apple TV+’s Dear … docuseries.
However, Gomez isn’t so intimidated by critics that she won’t call out body shamers online. “I don’t care about my weight because people bitch about it anyway,” she said via her TikTok Stories in April 2022. “’You’re too small,’ ‘you’re too big,’ ‘that doesn’t fit.’ ‘Meh meh meh meh.’ Bitch, I am perfect the way I am.”
After rocking a purple velvet Valentino dress at the 2023 Golden Globes, Gomez clapped back at haters who criticized her body. “I’m a little big right now because I enjoyed myself during the holidays,” she shared in a January 2023 Instagram Live. “I mean, come on, right?”
