Screaming all the way down
Chappell Roan is the advocate every young female performer needs
They say depression is a silent killer. It can be masked, despite being incredibly debilitating. But this masking is something you can improve, like everyday is an acting class and you’re becoming a better performer every time you get up on stage. The people closest to you are always shocked when you share your diagnosis with them—they had no idea, they’re so happy you told them, what can they do to help? you’re applauded for our bravery in taking off the mask you’ve been wearing. But when a celebrity removes their mask, they’re ridiculed for not continuing the performance that has us believing they are this persona they’ve always presented as. They are not brave, they are now weak for being honest, standing up for themselves and saying what they need. Especially when that vulnerable celebrity is a woman.
That’s why society is grappling with how it feels about Chappell Roan. In a profile published in The Guardian on Friday, the young singer shares about coming of age as a queer woman and artist, her mental health struggles, including a recent diagnosis of severe depression—the latter being the news all other media outlets deemed most headline-worthy.
The profile begins with a bang, an example of how Roan has never been one to stand down when witnessing an injustice of any degree. “I’m confrontational,” she says. “I’m very turned off by the celebrity of it all. Some girls have been in this so long that they’re used to that, but I’m not that girl. I’m not gonna be a sweetie pie to a man who’s telling me to shut the fuck up. [Fans] think I’m complaining about my success. I’m complaining about being abused.”
This confrontation has been front and centre in the media during her quick rise to fame. And she’s suffered scrutiny for it because this is not the way a young lady, especially a famous one, is expected to act. But she’s never been mean or said something problematic. What she has done is stand up for herself, laid boundaries with media and fans, and called out the “creepy” behaviour of some of her followers—an aspect of celebrity the public expects the famous to tolerate. It’s part of the gig. It’s what they signed up for.
It’s all fun and games
Female celebrities are supposed to be demure, mindful and cutesy—only speak when spoken to. Whereas Roan is playing a masterful game of bullshit and winning the tournament. Her being a woman, and a queer one at that, adds additional layers of why the public have been so startled, so off-put, by her behaviour as she’s become somewhat of an overnight sensation. But her public declarations strip away layers of celebrity and reveal her for the human she is. She is saying, I will come up here and perform for you but I’m doing it my way because I’m not changing who I am to please you.
Just over a week ago, at the VMA’s, Roan yelled at a photographer on the red carpet in response to him yelling at her—certainly not the type of behaviour the public expects of its young female artists. The photographer yelled at Roan to “Shut the fuck up,” as she was preparing for photos with her elaborate medieval costume on the red carpet, to which she responded back: “You shut the fuck up,” then wagged her finger at a heckler and said: “Don’t. Not me, bitch.”
The way we’ve seen Roan stand up for herself is not overly dramatic if you remove the context of a red carpet. She is often standing up for herself in very simple situations—for example, when someone is shouting at her, unprovoked. If this was a different situation, say a cat-caller yelling at a woman on the street, and she yelled back, would we be all up in arms about her “outburst?” Probably not. It would have been warranted based on his behaviour. This is the same setting, just unexpected behaviour from a pop singer who we expect to act a certain way.
As for Roan’s admission of experiencing severe depression and generally having a difficult time coping with her new fame—it’s not one we’re used to hearing. She’s alluded to the fact that just because she’s not outright gushing how grateful she is to be in her position every time she does an interview, doesn’t mean she isn’t grateful. Rather, I get the sense that everything else is outweighing any feelings of gratitude. She’s just trying to cope. And part of her process is sharing that publicly. So why are we upset? She’s giving us what we asked for: a glimpse at the star behind the curtain. Except this version of her doesn’t fit into our fantasies we’ve included her in.
Writer Lauren Hough nailed it in her Substack article “Chappell Roan doesn’t owe you shit” when she said America’s favourite pastime isn’t baseball—it’s building female artists up and tearing them down.
“You are not entitled to a goddamn thing but the art you purchased,” Hough wrote in light of Roan’s public statement telling invasive fans to “stop touching me.” Never one to hold back, she added: “I am not afraid of the consequences for demanding respect.”
“Stars who push back, who set boundaries, who beg for just a little privacy are called bitches and ungrateful. As though the act of streaming music you don’t even buy entitles you to every intimate detail of their life, to their family, to their very body,” Hough wrote.
“We’ve turned the act of stalking and harassment into a social event. We call it stan culture. It’s a nicer word, I guess, for stalking and harassment. There was a time when that creep who clipped interviews and pictures, carefully placed them in a scrapbook, covered their wall with images and memorabilia then drove to a star’s house and waited outside to catch a glimpse was rightfully reviled as a fucking lunatic. But you save all those pictures in your phone, repost them on social media, spin wild theories about someone’s private life, dissect their every move and believe that this is your friend, this is a person you know at all, and it’s somehow seen as normal.
“It’s not. It’s fucking weird. No is a complete sentence that you need to start hearing.”
What happened to her?
We’re used to celebrities suffering in silence; fans leaving comments under video clips on social media asking what’s going on with so-and-so, as if they’re entitled to a front-row seat of a star’s personal life. The guessing will go on as more clips of “odd behaviour” are uploaded out of context. Fans start to believe they know the celebrity because one time they were vulnerable during an interview and shared something personal, the fan clinging to this piece of information, creating a fantasy persona they attach to their idol.
This has been a very regular occurrence since Taylor Swift started her Eras tour last summer. Countless clips of the concerts have been uploaded to social media with endless comments and likes. Over the course of the tour’s year-plus-long tenure, we’ve seen Swift loosen up, have more fun on stage, being playful with her dancers and the audience, while maintaining a performance precision of the highest standards. But should her energy dip for half a second, fans will be questioning, What’s wrong with Taylor? as soon as the video is uploaded online.
If Swift seemed off one night, it was because her and her famous footballing boyfriend, Travis Kelce, broke up. The speculation continues and soon people have concocted stories as to why the couple may be on the outs—conspiracies pulled from other video clips of the couple together or on their own, sometimes with such distance between the original dates there could be no logical correlation. And this all happens within a matter of hours, a day or two, until she’s back up on stage, hitting her marks like a pro. They must not have broken up after all.
But Swift herself wrote of her masterful ability to hide her heartbreak and pain on the single I Can Do It With A Broken Heart, first released this spring as part of her Tortured Poets Department album. The upbeat, almost giddy beat of the track leaves the listener expecting anything but the lyrics they get—the music itself a true metaphor for the juxtaposition of her life as a person and a performer.
I can read your mind
"She's having the time of her life"
There in her glittering prime
The lights refract sequined stars off her silhouette every night
I can show you lies (one, two, three, four)
'Cause I'm a real tough kid, I can handle my shit
They said, "Babe, you gotta fake it 'til you make it" and I did
Lights, camera, bitch smile, even when you wanna die
The song is a tale of her heartbreak following breakup with longtime boyfriend Joe Allwyn, not long before starting her billion-dollar-grossing international Eras tour. This tour is a dream of hers, she’s said, and any artist would surely die to sell out stadiums across the world.
As someone who has historically saved chatter about her relationships for her lyrics, Swift has been uncharacteristically public (or at least we see it as being public in that she’s not hiding, going out for date nights, the paparazzi following the couple’s every move) about her relationship with Kelce. So when the song was released, their relationship had been established—this song was about a past heartbreak. She followed, to a T, the guidelines for expressing pain as a public figure: feel it privately then talk about it when it’s become (as close to) an afterthought in the public’s eye.1
We don’t want to see celebrities when they’re messy, especially when they’re young women. Take the fall of the 2000s queens, Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Nichole Ritchie, Amanda Bynes—we couldn’t handle them breaking down, being human, so we made a spectacle out of them. They’re still trying to live it down. Only when a celebrity has cleaned up her act are we ready for her to present to us the real story of what was going on.
But with Roan, we’re seeing things unfold much earlier than the big breakdown. We’re getting real-time updates on a young female celebrity’s mental health and general well-being and we aren’t comfortable with the transition. We’ve built these people up to live on pedestals of the highest ranking and to see them quiver at the top is not what we came to see. In our minds, they must remain forever statuesque, pristine, just as they were presented to us and just as we imagined them to be. Now we all find ourselves in a position where the foundation is shifting underneath us and we can’t decide which way to jump—Roan included.
When performers show signs of humanness, some of the sheen wears off and we are forced to see they are just like us: flawed and full of feelings, suffocating under the pressure we’ve forced them to endure by placing them in a box. We have to admit to ourselves that we never wanted to get close to them because who they really are is too relatable. And we don’t want to be held accountable for how we’ve made them feel—they’re there for us to stare at, to play with like dolls. And Roan is directly challenging that and it’s making people uncomfortable.
It’s about time.
It is not lost on me that so often art is created out of reflection, as is possible in this instance.