Selena Gomez Opens Up on Female Friendship While Being Famous: “It’s a Cliché, but Girls are Mean”

In her recent TIME cover story, Selena Gomez certainly opened up about the man in her life, Benny Blanco—but she also opened up about her girlfriends, too, telling the outlet that she’s deliberate about being friends with “levelheaded people.”

“It’s a cliché, but girls are mean,” she said. “It’s a very weird competition, being in the cool girls area—and then I’m just kind of like, there. I don’t know where I’m meant to belong.”

Gomez is friends with many a famous person—not the least of which is Taylor Swift—but told the publication that her best friends are a casting director, a producer, and a real estate agent. “I love having levelheaded people around that couldn’t give two fucks about what I do,” Gomez said.

She admitted that she, like all of us, struggles with loneliness, and, famous though she is, said “it’s hard”: “You could be in a crowd of people and still feel alone,” Gomez said. “I still deal with that.”

But loneliness is a part of the human experience, and Gomez told TIME of another human experience, heartbreak, that “you have to go through it,” adding “You can distract yourself and you can deny and deny all you want, but it’ll still be there,” she said. “I just allow myself to have those days.”

Prior to her seemingly extremely healthy relationship with Blanco (love this for her), Gomez experienced heartbreak in the public eye, namely after her breakup from ex Justin Bieber, whom she split with for a final time in 2018 after an eight year on-again-off-again relationship, Us Weekly reports.