On the discourse between Chappell Roan and “hating” fame

Over the summer, pop princess Chappell Roan blew up at a speed the music industry hasn’t seen in years. Her gay and campy approach to pop swept young music lovers everywhere off their feet and she’s been dominating the internet (and the music industry) ever since. 

With her explosive leap into stardom, Roan has been facing some serious online controversy. The bulk of this discourse started when Roan posted a series of TikToks addressing issues she has been facing with her newfound fame. In these videos, Roan asks a series of questions, comparing how people behave with her to how people behave with non-famous people. “If you saw a random woman on the street, would you yell at her from the car window? Would you harass her in public?” She further calls out this hypocrisy by saying, “I’m a random bitch. You’re a random bitch. Just think about that for a second.”

The common narrative with fame is that this type of erratic and horrifying fan behavior, like stalking and harassment, is to be expected. Roan pushes back against this notion in her second video, where she says, “I don’t care that abuse and harassment, stalking … is a normal thing to do to people who are famous. … That does not make it OK.” She ends the video with, “I don’t give a fuck if you think it’s selfish of me to say no for a photo. … It’s weird how people think that you know a person just ’cause you see them online and you listen to the art they make.” 

Roan’s establishment of boundaries with her fans is extremely rare to see among celebrities. Treating celebrities as both more and less than human is much too normalized. It is for this reason that Roan’s direct call out of the intense parts of fandom culture can almost seem rude or dismissive.

In her videos, it is specifically the word “random” that we should hone in on. The bulk of Roan’s point is that the audience doesn’t know her, which is true. We only know her through the small glimpses we get through her fame. With Roan specifically, this is even more true, as she prides herself on Chappell Roan being just a stage name, character and persona. This means that the small glimpses we do get of her are intentionally muddled, possibly far different from who she is outside the public eye. 

Many fans, of course, did not take kindly to these videos. After they were posted, the internet was flooded with jokes about Roan supposedly hating her fans or being ungrateful. Though Roan was simply setting a boundary regarding creepy behavior, so much of the internet has taken her statements out of context and declared that she is completely rejecting fame.

This perspective on Roan seems to be baked-in misogyny. Women are often expected to simply suck it up and take whatever abuses come at them, all while smiling and sitting pretty. For a woman to publicly reject this expectation as strongly as Roan has goes completely against what is expected of women in her position and freaks people out to the highest degree.

This discourse was just the start of the internet being weird toward Roan. The hate continued to build after she posted another series discussing this year’s presidential election. After a Rolling Stone interview where Roan expressed dismay at both sides of the political spectrum, people began pressuring her to endorse a candidate. People online began to twist her words completely outside of the context of this interview, in which she repeatedly draws attention to the necessity of trans rights in this country and says she feels “lucky to be alive during an incredibly historical time period when a woman of color is a presidential nominee.” This pressure led Roan to make a video discussing her interviews and further encouraging people to “vote small,” which got misconstrued again, until Roan made her final and highly debated video.

In this video, Roan confirms that she will be voting for Kamala Harris but doubles down on the idea that endorsing a side with her platform would be against her morals. This spiraled out of control completely online, with an insane amount of think pieces following in its wake. Some of the criticism was absolutely worthy of conversation — she pronounced Kamala’s name incorrectly and with an anger that is deserving of skepticism — but some of it seems both reductive and continues to take everything she said out of context. Many videos have also called for Roan to get a stronger PR team, another way of rendering her words meaningless and ignoring her message.

Two days after this political video was posted, Roan posted on her Instagram that she would be pulling out of “All Things Go” music festival to focus on her health. This only worsened the hate spiral and has led to videos saying things like “at what point is society enabling irresponsibility with Chappell Roan.”

This complete inability to engage properly with conversations about Roan online leads to many questions about fame. Why do we expect celebrities to push themselves so much further than their bodies can handle? At the same time, how much do they owe their audience in terms of performance? 

It is not morally right, in any case, to force an entertainer to perform when that performance costs them anything in terms of health. With Roan specifically, this angry response only worsens the experiences that likely caused her to drop out in the first place. Most of all, it is misogynistic to expect her to take the horrible things being thrown her way and face an audience despite feeling less than her best. 

When Lewis Capaldi canceled his entire tour for mental and physical health reasons, fans and the internet gave their full support, as they should. When Sam Fender did the same, he also received massive support online. So why when it comes to Roan is the internet tearing her name apart? Why are women expected to push themselves way too far while men can rest with no repercussions?

The expectations for women and performance are also clear when comparing Roan and Taylor Swift. Swift is known to go on with her shows in every possible condition, saying it freaks her out to cancel. Of course, some corners of the internet have tried to hold Roan to this same standard. In pitting these women next to each other, we actually see how intense these expectations are for both of them, with Swift expected to push herself way too far and Roan broken down for not conforming to this impossible standard.

For women, faltering in any way and showing emotion in this cutthroat industry is a sign of weakness. They are not allowed to show their emotion concerning what is often a completely overwhelming experience without facing a hate train accusing them of ingratitude and fragility. On the internet, this alleged weakness causes a spiral of word twisting and hate that only worsens the exhaustion that necessitated these stars needing a break in the first place, an endless spiral only working to demean and deteriorate the mental state of somebody already going through so much.

As Chappell Roan continues to dominate in her career, I hope the internet learns to respect some of the boundaries she is trying to bring attention to. Hopefully, with some respect and rest, Roan can get to a place on and off the internet where she can be listened to without a swarm of controversy attached to her every word, and prosper both musically and as a person.

Daily Arts Writer Campbell Johns can be reached at caajohns@umich.edu.

Related articles