Despite Appearances, Hailey Baldwin and Shawn Mendes Are Not Dating 

Showing up to the Met Gala with another person whom you could plausibly be boning is the surest way to set the gossip rags aflame. (Requisite Grimes/Elon Musk link here. I have a problem!) But in a new interview with The Times UK, Hailey Baldwin revealed that she and Shawn Mendes, despite walking the red carpet together earlier this month, are not currently on the trajectory to coupledom.

“We hang out and he’s super-lovely and a very, very nice young gentleman,” Baldwin told the publication. “But I am single.” She added that “the dating pool is small” (amen), and that “it’s rare to find somebody that has the same ideas and morals as me. I have found people like that before, though, which is refreshing.”

Mendes similarly threw out the word “single,” telling E! News: “I am single.” He went on:

“The Met Ball was such an incredible experience for me. It was just overwhelming in the most incredible way. I was so lucky for my first time going there to be able to go with someone like Hailey because she’s such a vet and I really admire people like her because of how outgoing she is in such an overwhelming experience.”

Two people who hang out but are not boning? Even at the Met Gala? Fine. Baldwin also revealed in the interview that she has solidly moved past her romantic experience with Justin Bieber, which was weird for awhile but now isn’t!:

“Justin and I were friends for a long time,” Baldwin says. “I met him when I was really young and he was one of my best friends. Everybody knows that at a certain point in time that turned into something else, but that just happens when you’re 18, 19. It was what it was. We went through a long period of time when we weren’t friends. We didn’t speak for quite some time and there was a lot of weirdness that went on. We’ve moved past that.”

I always get a kick out of it when people who are 21 refer to a time when they were “really young,” referring to the events of two years prior like a bygone era of their long, winding lives. Hailey Baldwin may not dating Shawn Mendes, but she does possess the accumulated wisdom of a 3,000-year-old mountain witch.