"I have lupus and deal with kidney issues and high blood pressure so I deal with a lot of health issues and for me that’s when I really started noticing more of the body image stuff," the 27-year-old explained on the Giving Back Generation podcast.
Selena – revealed her lupus diagnosis in October 2015 and received a kidney transplant in September 2017 – revealed that the medication she has to take for the rest of her life can change her body month-to-month, something that strangers felt the need to comment incessantly.
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"I really noticed when people started attacking me for that," the singer said. "In reality, that’s just my truth. I fluctuate. It depends what’s happening in my life. Right [it's totally out of my control], and that got to me big time. I think for me, that really messed me up for a bit."
But ultimately the experience helped change her relationship with social media for the better.
"I’m very happy with living my life. We were talking about it earlier, being in the present because that’s it. Similar to me posting a photo then walking away, for me that’s it. I’ll do a red carpet, I’ll do whatever, I don’t need to see it. I did it. I participated. I felt wonderful and that’s where the extent of it is. I don’t care to expose myself to everyone and hear what they have to say about it."
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Selena previously responded to body shaming comments backs in 2018 after she was papped in a bikini while boating on Sydney Harbour.
“The beauty myth – an obsession with physical perfection that traps modern woman in an endless cycle of hopelessness, self consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society’s impossible definition of flawless beauty,” she wrote alongside a video montage of her day with friends.
She's also been honest about how she's handled the changes in her body post-kidney transplant.
“I have a bit of an obtrusion that will be there forever,” she told TODAY about her stomach. “And that means I’m going to have to dress differently. It was really, really massive at first.”
“It was really hard in the beginning,” she said about her surgery scar in an interview with Billboard. “I remember looking at myself in the mirror completely naked and thinking about all the things that I used to bitch about and just asking, ‘Why?'”
“I don’t have perfect abs, but I feel like I’m wonderfully made,” she added.
