As I predicted back in January, Justin and Hailey Biebercover the March issue of Vogue,定时出来之前,那是他们的婚礼supposed to happen at the end of this month until it got postponed, and his birthday on March 1. And while I know it’s only February, this might be the celebrity profile of the year. Because it’s been a while since JB has been extensively interviewed.

Almost exactly three years ago, in February 2016, Caity Weaver wrote theGQ的权威贾斯汀·比伯（Justin Bieber）. It was titled “Justin Bieber Would Like to Reintroduce Himself”. On the anniversary of that reintroduction, this Vogue interview represents yet another new era of Justin Bieber even though his career is on hold, and the irony here is that even though this may be a new “era”, what exactly and who exactly he is, in this era, is still a work in progress. This is the work of not having any new work to work on because the big work project is himself. This interview is also JB’s first joint interview with his wife. It’s how they’re introducing their marriage, which has fascinated the world, to the world.

And the way we are meeting that marriage is that it’s…hard.

That’s one of the emerging themes from Vogue’s Meet the Biebers feature: marriage is hard. It is hard for them. They are finding it difficult. But the difficulty is not a surprise to them. Rather it’s something they insist they will confront together. A friend of mine texted me just now, thirty seconds after he’d finished reading it – EVERYONE IS READING IT TODAY – and wondered “why they made their brand ‘marriage is hard’”. Well, probably because since Justin proposed, like a month, or less, after they got back together last June, being as young as they are, and given how volatile their history and his history has been, the public perception was basically…these kids, man, do they know what they’re doing?

这是Biebers试图告诉我们，他们确实知道他们在做什么，告诉我们这很难。They’re also telling us that they didn’t have sex until they were married since JB was doing the no-sex thing for a year or so before he and Hailey found themselves again, having decided to be celibate after realising that his promiscuity was a symptom of unresolved childhood and fame pain. Which, I guess, means that when he was back together with Selena Gomez they weren’t having sex either. Not that Selena comes up at all in the article – she’s not mentioned, not once – but you can’t help but make the association with these kinds of details. It’s another reason why this might be the celebrity profile of the year.

不过，大多数情况下，这是贾斯汀的功能。他坦率而脆弱，就在作品的顶部。我的意思是，这就是我们打开的方式 - 贾斯汀谈论去某种务虚会并不得不离开，因为他还没有准备好去他们想带他的情感场所：

他解释说：“有这些言语。”“或不是真正的宗教信仰，而是这些传统。他们点燃蜡烛，这让我感到震惊。您坐在垫子上，放下枕头，然后击败过去。我击败了我妈妈一生沮丧的事实，而我爸爸有愤怒的问题。他们经历的东西我有点生气，他们给了我。”

I exhaled, deeply, after reading that. Anyone following Justin Bieber over the last decade would be familiar with this family background, but that’s probably the most concise analysis of where that comes from that we’ve heard, and it’s coming directly from him.

From there, there’s more evidence of self-reflection. His overnight superstardom turned him into an asshole. He self-medicated. He self-loathed. He has trust issues. He is insecure. He is afraid. He is impulsive. He is compulsive. He doesn’t think.

但是她想。我们被告知，海莉是婚姻中稳定的，而JB的结构要少得多。他们谈论这件事，就像她平静地理解了他的平静，这就是他一直在寻找的东西：一个可以是他可以坚持的人，无论是上帝还是他的妻子。这听起来很合理……到了一点。因为很明显，贾斯汀·比伯仍在试图弄清楚如何成为自己的稳定性。因此，如果婚姻现在很难，只有她的稳定必须保持不变，只有越来越困难。

You root for them though, it’s hard not to after reading this profile. It would be inhumane not to. All of it might be in service of a new clothing line or a celebrity partnership, but so much of what they’re sharing is so raw, there’s really not that much artifice surrounding the motivation, if there is a motive at all. Because the bigger picture here is fame, especially early fame, and the idea of getting what you want and not what you need. JB’s pastor, Judah Smith, sums it up well:

“[Justin] gives a lot to the world, and a lot has been taken from him, including a bit of the natural progression of development, the chance to grow relationally and socially. He can feel everything, and that’s from those years spent wondering who in the room is being authentic with him. His spider sense is remarkable, but it haunts him a bit. He’ll notice people’s eyebrow movements. I get emotional now, watching him make a great effort to care about the people around him when the last decade of his life was lived in a glass box.”

Well there’s an understatement. It’s not just a “bit” of the “natural progression” and “development”, but SO MUCH of it, most of it. And that part about making a “great effort to care about the people around him” speaks directly to empathy. You can’t tell a story without it. F-ck, you can’t live a true story without it. This is what’s happened to him. This is what he appears to be working on both on his own and in his marriage: how to truly participate in his own story that doesn’t dominate someone else’s even as his work, right now, to go back to the beginning of this post, is HIM.

It’s a fascinating read –click here有关完整的个人资料并在Vogue上查看图片 - 现在我要回到Reread凯蒂·韦弗的作品as a back to back comparison. Or, rather, examination of parts.