What Selena Gomez’s “My Mind and Me” Does Right
Her mind. That's exactly what Selena Gomez portrays in her long awaited documentary, My Mind and Me. The film extensively documents her mental health journey from 2016-2020. During that time, Selena had her kidney removed due to her suffering from lupus, an autoimmune disease. After also experiencing intense burnout, depression, and anxiety while on tour, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This was just before the release of her most successful album to date, Rare. The album chronicled her experiences with love, heartbreak, self-love, and acceptance.
I usually don’t pay attention to celebrity documentaries because they often glamorize the luxurious lifestyle that comes with fame with a scripted approach. However, what My Mind and Me does right is it touches upon mental health in a very relatable way. It makes the audience feel included in the conversation that needs to be had about normalizing behavior that comes with poor mental health. And Selena doesn’t shy away from having the camera show her at her worst.
But as a viewer, it’s also hard to see Selena confront her innermost emotions and speak so low of herself. At the beginning of the documentary, she criticizes how she looks in her tour outfits by stating that she has the body of “a twelve-year-old boy.” She describes this further by saying, "I could wear jeans and just switch up my T-shirt and put a beanie on and nobody would care.” For those who struggle with body image issues like myself, how many times have we seen ourselves in the mirror and criticized how our bodies looked in that moment? Or cried about how we’re going to look in that outfit for a party and decided to stay home instead? In that scene, Selena Gomez is just like the rest of us.
After performing and being hard on herself about her looks, she comes backstage and starts crying, apologizing excessively for messing up during her performance. She says, “I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.” Throughout the rest of the film, viewers can see Selena struggle with this feeling of not being good enough. In her diary, Selena writes, “I could receive a sea of compliments but I always pay attention to that one negative comment, and believe what they say.” As someone who’s followed her career for the past fifteen years, it’s incredibly hard for a human being to accomplish what she has in her then twenties. Yet, in her eyes, she has not reached her potential and has not succeeded to the best of her ability. It goes to show that an individual's personal successes or failures can never be measured by an outsider.
Part of what makes My Mind and Me an intriguing watch is how vulnerable and honest Selena is with the camera, especially about suicide. In the past, Selena has been a co-producer for Thirteen Reasons Why, a show adapted from the book of the same name where a teenager commits suicide and records tapes documenting why she did it. In her film, Selena talks about how she struggles with suicidal thoughts and addresses how, at the time, she believed the world would be a better place if she were gone. That sentiment is so hard to admit for so many people who struggle with suicidal thoughts and ideation, sometimes even to their family members. The fact that Selena can so blatantly express how she feels is admirable for the viewer and empowering for those who feel lost. Later on, during her trip to Kenya, Selena hears from a survivor having attempted suicide about persevering and learning to appreciate every single thing around her.
I sobbed throughout the documentary, especially during Selena’s formative trip to Kenya, where she visited an all-girls school with We Charity, an organization devoted to transforming the accessibility of education throughout the world. The girls at the school were so profound with how they think about their future. To add a bit of humor to an otherwise serious conversation about the power of educating a girl, Selena asks students if they ever think about boys and relationships, and a girl answers saying that it isn’t a focus for them right now and what's meant to be will be. She admires this answer.
One of the most important points in the documentary was made in Kenya when Selena expresses her wish for mental health resources, such as therapy, to be incorporated in all schools from kindergarten through high schools. She doubts her ability to make this happen since she feels she is not “good enough.” However, the workers there remind her that that's exactly why she should push for mental health reform. She can relate to those struggling. Mental health education is so pivotal, especially in 2022. So many students suffer at the hands of their own mind because they carry trauma from their childhood into their adulthood. For example, if someone were to educate children from a young age about how to confront the anxiety they face when their tummy hurts before a test, those children can grow up knowing how to cope with it. Why isn’t this normalized? Why do people still think therapy doesn’t help?
Throughout the documentary, Selena is visibly tired and exhausted during interviews, which makes you question why people around her don’t prevent her from doing more. The interviewers ask her questions like, “What does a Marshmallow mean to you?” And she answers with “They’re fluffy.” Interviewers don’t ask about her philanthropic efforts, which are incredibly important to her. After watching the documentary, one might assume that although her acting and music career are important, giving back to society is a huge part of who she is. Not asking her questions related to this aspect of her life or reacting to her sentiment is a disservice to her character and career.
The documentary ends with the pandemic and Selena’s lupus coming back from remission to affect both her physical and mental health. But despite her suffering, she is motivated to work on mental health reform and thus creates the Rare Impact Fund. The fund focuses on bettering mental health resources within schools and is an addition to her highly successful beauty brand.
There is so much to take away from My Mind and Me, but one of the most valuable lessons Selena conveys is how mental health issues don’t fade throughout our lives. We need to take care of our minds the same way we do our bodies and treat ourselves with love and respect.
If you or a loved one are struggling with mental health, here are some additional resources:
https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/tools-resources/individuals/index.htm
https://humanrights.weill.cornell.edu/resources/mental-health-resources-nyc
