This past Sunday at the 2016 American Music Awards, Selena Gomez made one of her first public appearances since she announced that she would be taking a break from the industry, canceling her Revival Tour, due to anxiety, depression and panic attacks that resulted from her battle with Lupus.
Lupus is an autoimmune disease, meaning that the immune system is unable to differentiate between viruses/bacteria and the body's healthy tissues. Thus, the body's immune system creates autoantibodies that attack and destroy healthy tissue. This results in inflammation, pain, and damage to various areas of the body.
After winning the award for Favorite Female Artist-Pop/Rock, she took the stage to give a short, but meaningful, acceptance speech. Here is the full speech, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly.
“In 2014 this stage was actually the first time that I was authentically, 100 percent honest with all of you. I think it’s safe to say that all of you know my life whether I like it or not. I had to stop because I had everything and I was absolutely broken inside. I kept it all together enough to where I would never let you down but I kept it too much together to where I let myself down. I don’t want to see your bodies on Instagram. I want to see what’s in here [holds chest]. I’m not trying to get validation nor do I need it anymore. All I can say from the bottom of my heart is I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to be able to share what I love every single day with people that I love. I have to say thank you so much to my fans because you guys are so damn loyal and I don’t know what I did to deserve you. If you are broken, you do not have to stay broken. If that’s anything whether you respect me or not that’s one thing you should know about me. I care about people. Thank you so much for this. This is for you.”
This speech is among numerous 'inspirational' celebrity speeches, but still evokes a large wave of emotional response for the generation that grew up watching her on Barney and Friends and Disney Channel, and watching her develop her music career. She is the celebrity who your parents can recognize and know by name, because her show was on their living room TV every week. She is somebody who we have watched grow up, and have grown up with, making her words much more personal, as if they occurred during a one-on-one conversation rather than a speech given in front of an audience of millions.
Through observation of online discussion, it was clear that her quote "If you are broken, you do not have to stay broken" resonated the most. This speech was not the first time that a celebrity has used their status to evoke a message about self-love and knowing what is best for you. However, the message behind this speech reaches deeper than simply becoming a cheesy quote that people will use to caption their Instagram pictures.
Instead, this quote serves to highlight the importance of recognizing mental issues and taking action to get help. Very publicly, Gomez struggled with depression as a side affect of her Lupus, but depression is also an illness all on its own. Depression affects as many as 16.1 million people in the United States each year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, and it affects every person in a different way.
There are multiple forms of depression, and they can develop under unique circumstances. Depression causes severe symptoms that affect the way that one feels, thinks, and handles daily activities. Awareness of depression and its effects on individuals of all ages around the world has increased over the years, but it still remains a somewhat taboo topic. Gomez's speech brings a public face to mental health issues, allowing her to convey a very important message to those who struggle with depression on a daily basis: it gets better.
This phrase has been repeated numerous times and has become the centerpiece of cliche Tumblr posts, but this does not decrease the value of the words in any way. At the end of the day, people want to know that their current state is not the state that they will be stuck in for the rest of their lives. Speeches like this contribute to this hope, and serve as a reminder that nobody is completely alone in their struggles.
