THE ARTS
Selena Gomez
Mental Health in the Beauty Industry ZA ZU L I P P E RT
In 2016, Selena Gomez was the mostfollowed person on Instagram. Now, she doesn’t even have the Instagram app on her phone. In fact, she’s removed all social media apps from her personal devices. And she believes this decision has changed her life for the better. Gomez told Elle magazine in October that getting off social media was “a huge, significant part of why I feel like I’ve been as healthy as I have been.” It’s one of many steps the singer and actress has publicly taken to protect her mental health. In recent years, Gomez has been extremely vocal about her journey with mental health, and has used her platform to extend the conversation about one of the biggest issues facing Millennials and Gen Z today. Now, she has embedded mental health educational resources into her new cosmetics brand, Rare Beauty. And it’s changing how people approach the topic in the beauty and lifestyle industries. As an avid follower of lifestyle and beauty/
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RELEVANCE REPORT 2021-22
wellness brands, I’ve seen my fair share of mental health-related content. In this landscape, CSR-related posts and articles with headlines like “10 Ways to De-Stress” or “How to Protect Your Mental WellBeing This Month” are common. This content, while valuable, has a distinct focus: improvement of mental health, often in “one-size-fits-all” suggestions. Rare Beauty takes a different approach, focusing on increasing education around mental health. It’s a message that rings authentic through Gomez’s own experiences. She spoke about her diagnosis with depression and anxiety in a speech, saying that she was “equal parts terrified and relieved — terrified because the veil was lifted, but relieved that I finally had the knowledge of why I had suffered with various depressions and anxieties for so many years. I never had full awareness or answers about this condition.” Opening up about her diagnosis with bipolar disorder on Miley Cyrus’ Bright Minded Instagram Live series, she similarly expressed that learning more about it was extremely helpful.
