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Louise Thomas
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Hailey Bieber has hit back at the scrutiny she’s faced throughout her marriage to Justin Bieber.
The 27-year-old model – who’s currently pregnant with her and Justin’s first baby – spoke candidly about her relationship during an interview with W Magazine, published on July 23. She expressed that while she’s been with the “One Time” singer since 2018, they’re still being hit with immense scrutiny over their marriage, including speculation that they’re headed for a breakup.
“People have made me feel so bad about my relationship since day one. ‘Oh, they’re falling apart. They hate each other. They’re getting divorced.’ It’s like people don’t want to believe that we’re happy,” she said.
The Rhode founder acknowledged that while she’s tried to ignore the criticism, that doesn’t change how much she’s been “hurt” by it.
“I used to try to act like it hurts less and less,” she continued. “I’ve tried to think that you get used to it at a certain point, that this is what’s going to be said and this is how people are going to be. But I realize that it doesn’t actually ever hurt any less.”
In 2018, Hailey and Justin shocked fans with the news of their engagement, since it came only a few months after the singer ended his longtime relationship with Selena Gomez. At the time, there were even rumors that Justin started his relationship with Hailey while he was still dating the Disney Channel alum.
However, Hailey has made it clear that this wasn’t the case, as she told Alex Cooper in 2022 that Justin was single when they started dating.
“When he and I ever started hooking up or anything of that sort, he was not ever in a relationship, ever, at any point,” she explained during an episode of Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast. “It’s not my character to mess with someone’s relationship. I would just never do that, I was raised better than that. I’m not interested in doing that and I never was.”
She also addressed fans’ concerns over the timeline of their engagement, since it came after he’d been “spending time with his ex.”
“I understand how it looked from the outside and there’s a lot of perception there, but that was a situation where I know for a fact that it was the right thing for them to close that door,” she said, referring to Gomez. “They were not in a relationship at that time but of course, there’s a very long history there.”
However, months later, fans once again pitted Gomez and Hailey against each other. The fuel behind these feud rumors started in January 2023, with some claiming that Hailey and her friend Kylie Jenner were mocking Gomez, who’d expressed on TikTok that she laminated her eyebrows too much. While Jenner quickly denied the claims, Gomez also spoke out two months later, telling fans to stop sending death threats to Hailey. The “Rare” singer also noted that “no one should have to experience hate or bullying.”
Hailey later thanked Gomez for releasing the statement on her own Instagram, where she acknowledged that the rumors had been “very hard for everyone involved.” She also shared that while “social media is an incredible way to connect,” the criticism towards her and Gomez “only create extreme division instead of bringing people together.”
In June 2023, Hailey once again addressed the hurtful narrative that’s been made up about her and Gomez amid the model’s marriage with Justin.
“I don’t think that this is about me, Hailey Bieber, and Selena Gomez,” she said during an appearance on Bloomberg’s The Circuit, where host Emily Chang asked her about the situation. “This is not about this pitting between two women - it’s about the vile, disgusting hatred that can come from completely made-up and twisted, and perpetuated narratives that can be really dangerous.”
Elsewhere in her interview with W Magazine, Hailey acknowledged how she’s wanted to keep parts of her personal life private, including the first six months her pregnancy. “I was honestly able to keep it quiet because I stayed small for a long time,” she said. “I didn’t have a belly, really, until I was six months pregnant, which was when I announced it. I was able to wear big jackets and stuff.”
However, she confessed that she didn’t enjoy hiding her baby bump for so long, adding: “I felt like I was hiding this big secret, and it didn’t feel good. I wanted the freedom to go out and live my life.”
