She checked into rehab in January following her split from Justin Bieber and in order to learn about herself – something which Selena Gomez decided to share with hundreds of youths at the ‘We Day’ event in California yesterday.
The singer/actress was invited to be a guest speaker at the ‘We Day’ event held at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.
‘We Day’ is an event that began in 2007 and was started by the Free the Children charity. The “youth empowerment” event is held across Canada and the US in an attempt to motivate young people to take action on local and global issues.
Gomez talks the to audience about her rise to fame and the struggles that comes with it, saying: “”I’m surrounded by people who are supposed to guide me and some of them have and others haven’t.”
She continues, “They pressure me, ‘You gotta be sexy, you gotta be cute, you gotta be nice, you gotta be all these things’.”
During the emotional eight-minute speech, she also said: “You can all relate. You all have pressure that you have to deal with every day – with school, with work, with friends, with parents, with family. They tell me what to wear, how to look, what I should say, how I should be.
“Until recently I had given into that pressure, I lost sight of who I was. I listened to opinions of people and I tried to change who I am because I thought others would accept me for it. And I realized I don’t know how to be anything but myself.
“All I really want you to know is that you are changing the world, I’m not changing the world, you’re changing the world and that’s amazing.’
Watch Selena’s full speech below
[EW]
