The peace none of us knew we needed: Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber, pictured together at the weekend, hugging. Cue a pop cultural meltdown.
Obviously, the first few times I was at parties with him and his new partner, I was stiff and uneasy, a fact I tried to cover up with smiley amiability and jokes. Of that particular time – about six years ago now – all I remember is feeling exhausted by my own punchlines.
We all compare ourselves to others, and in the particular situation of exes, the “through the looking glass” effect is all the more confronting – here’s a person who has the life you could have had. What became abundantly clear to me, though, was that if I felt bad, it wasn’t because anyone was making me feel bad. It was more a reflection of my own anxieties, which I was projecting onto other people.
In those situations, there’s one school of thought which argues that women are held to unrealistic standards, expected to “rise above” the pain or risk being branded crazy and tragic. That whole “messy” woman aesthetic – Cassie’s emotions exploding out of every orifice in– felt like an interesting antidote to the Stepford wife, grin-and-bear-it approach.