This year has brought forth no shortage of surprising celebrity relationships. No one was banking on Miley Cyrus partnering with Kaitlynn Carter after their divorces, and even fewer saw Cyrus’s relationship with Cody Simpson coming (most likely because many of us forgot Cody Simpson existed.) But for all the perfect pairings that came out of this year—Halsey and Evan Peters, Dua Lipa and Anwar Hadid, heck, even Rosario Dawson and Cory Booker—there was one pairing cursed from the get-go. They dominated headlines, they made out whenever a camera was pointed their way except on stage at award shows, and they were dubbed “Shamila” long before ever actually touching mouths: I’m speaking, of course, of Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello. As the year comes to a close, I have only these words to offer those two and their loyal shippers: farewell, bitches.
Young celebrity couples rarely go the distance, even if they began as flirty friends. The myth that the sturdiest relationships begin platonically is proven to be just that–a myth–time and time again in Hollywood. There are countless examples, and while I think the Internet era has destroyed most people’s ability to pay attention to and retain information, I assume most Jezebel readers remember how Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake ended. (If you don’t: not well.) Such will soon be the case for Shawn and Camila.
The pair have been friends for at least half a decade, since 2014, when they both opened for then wannabe-Justin Bieber, Austin Mahone. The following year, they released a sultry duet, “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” which they now, retroactively, site as the beginning of their flirtation. In the Summer of 2019, Cabello broke up with her longtime English beau Matthew Hussey and released a new, sexy single with Mendes titled, “Señorita” just days later, exposing them to be something more than friends. The timing is suspect because the relationship appears to be hella suspect. I hate to break it again, but Shamila is likely the result of brilliant marketing. And nothing else. Fans wanted this partnership to be realized for years, and now their careers are benefitting from it. But wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where romances didn’t feel so phony or forced? Couldn’t these two have gotten together off record before hoping on, at the very least maintaining the illusion of authenticity?
Like all temporary pop music marking schemes, this too shall pass. And there’s no time like the present to say goodbye to #Shamila. Being single is in in 2020, spread the word.