A workout video of Justine Skye and Hailey Bieber caused controversy—and prompted a public response from Skye—after fans accused her and Hailey of throwing shade at Selena Gomez, the ex-girlfriend of
Hailey's husband Justin Bieber. The two girls were exercising with DJ Khalid and Drake's "POPSTAR" in the background—the song that namedrops Gomez. Justin made headlines for appearing in the music video and lipsyncing the part where Gomez's name is. Fans claim in the clip, Skye can be heard saying, "Nobody says Selena," then laughing.
people say you can hear justine say “nobody says selena” and hailey was present pic.twitter.com/njba470Kyp
— ❤️ (@ofselenamarie) September 17, 2020
Other fans are less convinced you can hear anything besides the song in the clip:
they claim she “shaded” selena in this video cause they thought she said “nobody says selena” when you can’t even hear anything pic.twitter.com/I5I8HSapVR
— jay.⁷ˣ⁴ ✨ (@ungodIykordei) September 17, 2020
But the accusations were enough to lead some fans to attack Skye and Hailey on Twitter. Skye responded to them on her account, writing, "I was tryna be nice but idc, you guys are fucking weird .. stop searching for reasons to attack people defense of your FAV. Especially if it’s completely inaccurate. Don’t y’all have homework to do or somethin ?"
I was tryna be nice but idc, you guys are fucking weird .. stop searching for reasons to attack people defense of your FAV. Especially if it’s completely inaccurate.
— Justine Skye (@JustineSkye) September 17, 2020
Don’t y’all have homework to do or somethin ?
Hailey, meanwhile, deactivated her Twitter—likely because she reached her limit on the comments she was willing to take from fans upset she married Justin. (Justin and Gomez were in a nearly 10-year on-off relationship. They broke up for the last time in March 2018. In June 2018, Justin started dating Hailey again. He proposed to her in July 2018 and married her in September 2018.)
Hailey spoke in May 2020 about the comparisons fans make between her and Justin's exes, including Selena. She and Justin were asked by a fan how they "manage to be a couple when everyone feels like they have a say in their relationship."
"Let me start by saying there's probably a lot I could say about that particular question, about that subject," Hailey began. "It's definitely not easy. Justin knows that I've had a really, really hard go, and a really hard time with a lot of the things people say, and a lot of the ways that I feel like people have made comparisons and just put me in a position where they've made me really feel like less of a woman. It's not easy, I think especially when people have fans that are really passionate and they want to express that and they want to express their opinion...I also think when people have a lot to say about something, they go out of their way to make somebody feel less than or go out of their way to make somebody feel bad, it's because they're going through something themselves, and they're projecting onto this public figure, and it makes them feel better about themselves. That reality doesn't make it any easier, but I think it helps to remind myself, 'That person is only making me feel that way because they're going through something themselves.' I've addressed it a lot, I've addressed how...I think I've gotten to a point where people are gonna say what they're gonna say...people think they know what happened in his life and his relationships and they think they know what happened between us and our relationship and how we got here and there's no possible way they could. They invent details that they think are true that really aren't, and I got to a point where I'm like, 'Why am I even gonna try to go out of my way to set the record straight where it's really nobody's business and it doesn't matter?...There's so much that people don't know that went behind the scenes."