Selena Laughs Off Calling Justin Her ‘Little Brother’

Selena Gomez isn’t usually forthcoming with details when she talks about her beau, Justin Bieber. So when she stopped by “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” for an appearance airing Tuesday (March 22), the talk-show host took it upon herself to remind the teen star that she once referred to her now-boyfriend as her “little brother.”

DeGeneres played an old clip in which Gomez says, “He’s little. He’s like my little brother.” After seeing the clip, Gomez joked, “Don’t take me to jail! It’s a great thing to say, huh? I don’t know [what to say].”

She giggled as DeGeneres said, “You were trying to hide it still, right? But now you’ve made it public … You went to the Vanity Fair [Oscar night] party [together] and made me a fool.”

“I promise you, I didn’t,” Gomez told the talk show host. “He’s just sweet.”

“He is,” DeGeneres went on to say. “He’s sweet as can be. But he’s not like your little brother, is he? No, he’s not. And he’s a fantastic guy. You can’t try to hide that forever. I know you all were sneaking around, but that’s crazy. You’re both huge stars, and you can’t hide from us.”

“I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t, though. I’ll say that,” Gomez said, adding that it “would be weird” to date her “little brother.” DeGeneres had a special gift for Gomez to help keep Justin close while they’re apart: a pillow with Bieber’s face on it. “He’s gonna make me sleep with this every night,” Gomez said. Sure, Gomez may have called Bieber her little brother during a chat with Ellen last fall, but that wasn’t the first time she referred to him that way. Back in February 2010,Gomez echoed similar sentiments to MTV News.

“I love Justin. When he first started to come over from Canada, his manager contacted me and he just said that he would like to meet me and he was just such a good kid,” she explained. “And I feel like a big sister now, ’cause I want to protect him. So I’m always very cautious with him, but he is so talented and he’s so sweet, so that just started us wanting to work together. Now he’s just become one of my good friends.”