When Selena Gomez Fired Her Parents as Managers Thinking 'She’s Outgrown Them'
Selena Gomez's professional career saw great success at a very young age, all thanks to her mother, Mandy Teefey, who always had her back. Her mother and stepfather, Brian Teefey also became her managers when she got the role of Alex Russo in Wizards of Waverly Place. However, it was reported earlier in 2014 that soon after achieving fame as a Disney icon, Gomez, who was 22-years-old at the time, felt that she'd outgrown her parents. She fired her parents as managers and started looking for a professional manager who had previous experience, as reported by the Daily Mail.
The source said, "Selena feels she's outgrown her parents." Despite the rumors, family discord wasn’t the reason for her decision as Gomez continued to maintain a close bond with her parents. The real need for the change reportedly came after Gomez rekindled her romance with her ex, Justin Bieber. At a California event earlier that year, Gomez said, “I am surrounded by people who are supposed to guide me — and some of them have and some haven’t. They pressure me. There is so much pressure. ‘You got to be sexy. You got to be cute. You got to be nice. You have to be all those things.'”
As reported by Fox News, she added, "I listened to opinions of people and I tried to change who I am because I thought that others would accept me for it. And I realized that I don’t know how to be anything but myself.” Her parents were reportedly against her decision to get back with her ex. A source said, "They're doing their best to supervise them." The person also said that Mandy and Brian had very little command over Gomez's life. The source added, "They don’t have any control over her. She's pulling the, 'Who makes the money around here?' card." Even after the decision, Gomez was close to her mom and dad but they didn’t seem happy about her decision.
All the while, Gomez has always credited her mother’s support and inspiration as the driving force behind her success. As reported by ELLE Magazine, she said, “When I started working, my mom was the person in my life that helped guide me through most of that. Everything that I am has kind of become a little bit of what my mom has gone through. She had the ability to make me feel like I was still capable of doing anything I wanted.” When Mandy was 16, she found out she was pregnant, and she welcomed her daughter Gomez in 1992.
Revealing her struggles as a teen mom, Mandy said, "I was a teen mom with Selena, obviously, and was very judged by that, even by my counselors and my teachers [who said] that I failed and just let go of it." As reported by Entertainment Weekly, she added, "My neighborhood was a really rough neighborhood [with] gangs. With all of that stuff, and when I got pregnant, I think that's what triggered, because I was like, 'OK, I have another person depending on me. I gotta get straight,' and that's when I started hammering through. I'm like, 'I'm not going to let her have the upbringing I did.' I kind of kept powering through -- you get used to it."
