Why Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez May Be the Same Person

Selena Gomez, pop starlet and 20-year-old girlfriend of teen sensation Justin Bieber, recently raised eyebrows when this super-sexy Elle magazine cover hit newsstands ...

It's a career moment that any young woman who was famous before she was an adult will go through. That moment when people note that you've not only crossed the legal threshold of boneability, but the aesthetic threshold as well. It's something tabloid magazines and celebrity gossip sites never get tired of talking about, because coming up with valuable information to relay to your audience is super hard when the subjects you're covering only do something of value like once every ten years.

It's probably because of the casual disinterest with which we greet news of another young celebrity who's done the unthinkable by aging that nobody picked up on the one newsworthy aspect of this story.

If you look at that cover closely, it reveals something quite interesting ...

... Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez are the same person.

We have half a mind to file a Freedom of Information Act request to see the non-retouched version of that cover photo, if for no other reason than to confirm that some sneaky backroom Elle magazine staffer didn't just Photoshop Bieber's face into the picture for a laugh. Kind of like that meme where if you Photoshop Katy Perry's face onto Paula Deen's face what you get is just another picture of Paula Deen.

Pull a face swap on the young couple, and you get the same uncanny similarity ...

The eerily doppelganger-ish Elle cover picture is just the latest in a recent string of clues that lead us to believe that the artists we all know as "Justin Bieber" and "Selena Gomez" are in fact one musician of indeterminate age, gender and nationality who performs as two separate personas, likely to be freed from the constraints of performing music as just a man or just a woman.

Sounds insane? Sure it does, mom, but it's not like we're just using that one picture to build our case. Take the "couple's" debut albums, for example. Both had confessional-sounding titles -- My World for Justin Bieber, Kiss and Tell for Selena Gomez -- and sport album covers that prominently feature each young star's deliciously pouty lips.

It's like two sides of the same coin.

Oh, but you've seen lots of pictures of the two together, so there's no way this could be true unless there was some kind of accomplice in on the act. So this is all a bunch of nonsense. And to that we say, you're right, there would have to be another party involved in the plot. Like, oh, we don't know, a lookalike, maybe?

Those are pictures from the set of the music video for Justin Bieber's single "Boyfriend." Why are there two? Because the girl on the left is a "Selena Gomez lookalike" who was cast solely for this video. The girl on the right, allegedly, is Selena Gomez. So here's a question. If the song is called "Boyfriend" and Justin Bieber is the "boyfriend" of Selena Gomez, who was on the set at the time, why didn't she just co-star in the video?

The answer is simple. Selena Gomez could not co-star alongside Justin Bieber in that video because there is no Selena Gomez. That "lookalike" story that leaked from the set of the "Boyfriend" video is nothing more than a ruse to explain away the fact that Selena Gomez:

Never looks quite like herself ...

When she's ...

In the same room ...

With Justin Bieber ...

That's because "Selena Gomez" is just the name attached to the female persona taken on by the musician who also occupies the body of the artist we know as Justin Bieber.

Interestingly, Justin Bieber's camp initially refused to release the identity of the mystery girl in the video, only bothering to concoct a background story for her when Bieber's notoriously bloodthirsty fans demanded a name to forward their death threats to.

We're not saying that definitely proves our theory. We're just suggesting that all of those Beliebers calling for Selena Gomez's head on a stick should be careful what they wish for.