
TW: Death, manslaughter
For the past six months, Chappell Roan has been the name on everybody’s lips. Despite attempting to make it as a singer for the larger part of a decade, in the April of this year she was catapulted to new heights of fame when her song ‘Good Luck, Babe!’ went viral online, granting her A-List celebrity status practically overnight. Roan’s songs became a staple in every summer playlist, and I personally struggled (without complaint) to escape a daily viewing of at least one Instagram story that consisted of her music playing in the backdrop. In simpler words: Chappell Roan was pop culture’s newest princess.
But, like every media-adored woman who came before her, her reign didn’t last long. In an Instagram post published on 24th August 2024, Roan publicly announced that she would be taking a step back from music following the behaviour of alleged “fans” who had begun to stalk and harass her family. Rather than being met with the loyal support of the media that claimed to adore her, the comments of the post were filled with criticism. Many people were expressing the sentiment that she should have expected the perverse parasocial relationships she had become victim to, and that she had actually signed up to be treated like this when she became a celebrity. Things have since continued to spiral. After admitting that she had been diagnosed with depression, cancelling shows out of concerns for her health, and publicly stating that although she would be voting Democrat in the upcoming US election, she could not endorse Kamala Harriss due to the Democrats’ failure to speak adequately on the situation in Gaza, people have continued to criticise her at every corner. From ungrateful, to entitled, to ‘ruining everything’, Chappell Roan has been called it all.
Despite this being Roan’s first rise and fall of the media type, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that this is a film I’ve seen before. On deeper reflection, it becomes scarily apparent that the media has a recurring tendency to take a female celebrity, idolise and worship her, and then irrevocably turn on her at the first possible chance. In the 2010s, it was Jennifer Lawrence. Originally a beloved Hollywood Starlet, hailed as an icon of relatability, she was eventually cast aside as a cringe-worthy try hard. Anne Hathaway suffered a similar fate, being victimised by the ‘HathaHate’ hashtag that sprang out of the belief that she was too perfect, and therefore must be fake. In more recent years, it was Brie Larson who had her turn as the media’s sacrificial lamb, whose acting in Captain Marvel was apparently so bad that it warranted constant visual comparisons of her face against a slice of brie cheese with oh-so-clever jokes about who the better actor was. Naturally, her previous acting acclaims were entirely ignored. Within the past couple of years alone, we’ve seen this phenomenon repeated with Sydney Sweeney, Jenna Ortega, Rachel Zegler, the entire ‘The Last Dinner Party’ band, and now Chappell Roan.
The fact that the media has always spun its female celebrities round in this never-ending cycle of vehemence has been well established, and misogyny does undoubtedly play a role in this; whilst men are also subject to media cycles (‘white boy of the month’ for example) very few seem to be subject to as much hatred as their female counterparts. In complete honesty, the only time I can remember a man being met with as much criticism as Chappell Roan was when Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed Halyna Hutchins amidst a movie scene rehearsal gone wrong. It still feels hypocritical to even draw the parallel between a man who went to trial for involuntary manslaughter to a woman who… doesn’t want her family to be stalked?
It still feels to me as though there is something different about these recent cases of female subjection to the highs and lows of fame. Namely, that’s how quickly these highs and lows oscillate. Jennifer Lawrence, for example, was loved for years and then hated for several more, before fading into the background and getting typecast as the ‘slightly problematic’ lead in comedy films. Chappell Roan, however, was met with global adoration as ferocious as it was short lived; in a matter of six months the reception of her had changed completely. I’ve struggled to understand how a ‘rise and fall’ as drastic as this could possibly happen, but I think the answer lies upon the same route as many-a-modern-day problem: overconsumption.
For some reason or other, our generation has broadly abandoned the idea of distinct trend cycles. Sure, there are some things that trend in a more traditional pattern. Take jean styles, for example. The evolution from Skinny, to Mom, to Flare, and finally straight leg wasn’t particularly drastic, I admit. But with social media platforms acting as magnifiers of every miniscule thing a person does, ‘micro-trends’ have been born. Whether it’s the concept of ‘blueberry milk nails’, a trend so niche and short-lived that to call it a trend without the ‘micro’ suffix would feel untrue, or the concept of a ‘coastal granddaughter summer’, everyone has come across some minute detail of presentation that they’ve wanted to try out. Every possible clothing item, accessory, colour, makeup product, hairstyle, etc, has become neatly categorised into a microtrend. People are now expected to assign themselves to a microtrend too – to be an office siren, a clean goth (which I still can’t wrap my head around), a coquette girl, a vanilla girl, a girl who wears tomato blush or latte makeup or has cloud skin, a girl who participates in brat summer. We have managed to compartmentalise ourselves in a way that allows us to be easily perceived and categorised by others. But these trends change quickly, with ‘Saltburn Summer’ fizzling out into the background of our lives before the trees even turned green again. And so, our identities change too quickly to maintain any semblance of longevity.
The undeniable truth is that in this modern age of media, ‘trends’ have become so short-lasting that we are being perpetually called to consume. We’re asked to buy new clothes and new makeup and discard the ones we bought only six months ago. With our identities constantly shifting with the trend cycles, the art we identify with and consume changes rapidly too. The once-loved song becomes a cringey memory: and with it, so does the artist. Combined with the media’s “war on women”, it’s no wonder Chappell Roan went from universally adored to attacked at every corner so rapidly. The intersection of late-stage capitalism and the misogynistic ideologies that pervade our lives and our media have left us with a void where female celebrities and their art become commodities to discard and replace as soon as their novelty wears off, like any other micro-trend.
It’s a sad fate, and not one that any of these women deserve. But with our modern society-wide obsession with all things new, it nonetheless feels inevitable that women within the public eye are thrown out before even getting accustomed to their adoration. So if you were hoping to be a woman at the centre of the world’s spotlight? Well, good luck babe.