While Selena Gomez spends her time in 2017 dominating Instagram (and the music charts), 10 years ago, things were totally different. The 25-year-old got her start as a Disney star, most notably on the show Wizards Of Waverly Place. That, combined with her music career, quickly launched her into stardom — something she wasn't entirely ready for.
"When I was younger, it was all fun to me," she said in an interview with Business Of Fashion to accompany her makeup-free cover. "When I did state fairs and 100 people would show up, I would be stoked. That was the best feeling in the world. But when I got older, I started to become exposed to the truth behind some stuff and that’s when it flipped a little bit."
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Particularly towards the end of her time at Disney, when she started to outgrow the role she initially started with, Gomez had to reevaluate.
"I realized that, 'Oh this is actually really hard, and kind of slimy in certain areas,' and I didn’t realize that certain people wanted certain things from me," she explained. "My confidence went through a lot with that."
By the end of it all, she didn't even know who she was — just that she wasn't happy. Looking back, she definitely found herself in situations that didn't sit right.
"I felt very violated and I didn’t like it or understand it, and that felt very weird, because I was a young girl and they were grown men," she continued. "I didn’t like that feeling. Then, I would say the last season of my show, I was probably 18 years old, is when I felt like the flip happened. I didn’t feel like it was about my art as much."
So she closed that chapter, and has since started and ended many new ones (including her most recent single, "Fetish," and her upcoming role in Woody Allen's new movie). Rest assured, however, that her book is far from over.