Why is it that everyone thinks an artist owes their privacy to a fanbase? Their intimate lunches with family on restaurant patios, their walk to pick up medications, their post-infidelity tears all belong to their audience. For an artist to claim their dislike for this lack of humanity is to be painted in the public eye as ungrateful and unaware of the contract you’ve signed to do away with your personal life. This idea of fans and the general public believing they have a right, or even wanting that right, to pictures, to acknowledgement from them and to the inner workings of celebrity life has recently become especially visible to me.
This question of celebrity obsession freshly on my mind is because of Chappell Roan. She was recently crucified over TikTok videos she posted that have amassed over 30 million views, where she airs her grievances with obsessive fan culture that fiends for celebrity interaction. I am not a Chappell Roan superfan, though this isn’t to say I haven’t listened to her entire album, because I have: I am guilty of replaying “Good Luck Babe” for the entirety of an hour drive. I watched her Tiny Desk Concert and suddenly realized that lipstick being stuck on your teeth can be chic. I say this to clarify that this is not a defense of Chappell Roan, rather an open-ended brain spill asking you, reader, why there is a societal obsession with celebrities and their personal lives?
Chappell Roan has taken over the pop music scene, creating a new avenue for queer pop with a range of artsy bright tracks and slow lovesick ballads. While she’s been a part of the music industry for almost 10 years, it was within the past year when she catapulted into the mainstream with the release of her album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. She has amassed over 45 million Spotify listeners and is believed to have drawn in the largest crowd at the 2024 Lollapalooza music festival. In this rise to fame, now being a phenomenon in the music industry (a Femininomenon, if you will), Chappell Roan is up to her neck in fans.
Chappell Roan performing at Lollapalooza 2024. Photo retrieved from Rolling Stone.
Chappell Roan has built a platform on her personal TikTok, sharing videos as any average user would, and often gets attention for her humor and relatability. As social media has become such a standard part of everyday life, fanbases feel closer and closer with celebrities who they know nothing about. Social media has created a space where fans feel like they are getting more intimate relationships with celebrities, when it’s really just a mask of relatability most often funneled through social media managers and PR teams. In two recent TikTok videos, Roan asks the viewers if they’d treat a random woman the same way they treat her:
“This lady you don’t know, and she doesn’t know you at all, would you assume she’s a good person? Assume she’s a bad person? Would you assume everything you read online about her is true? I’m a random bitch, you’re a random bitch.”
Many people were up in arms about this: How dare she be so ungrateful? How dare she be so selfish? Doesn’t she know that this is what she’s asked for? Doesn’t she know that amassing this fame means you must be at the beck and call of those who enjoy your art? Even those who don’t, those who have just heard the name Chappell Roan in flutters of conversation and know only of her red curls, expect that she performs both on and off stage.
If you knew Chappell Roan didn’t want to take pictures with you, would that stop you from being a fan? Why does she owe that to the world? Because that’s how it’s always been? She doesn’t want you to do that. If you don’t like that, stop supporting her! Stop asking her for pictures, stop listening to her music… that’s what she’s saying.
Her approach to her videos and the casual vulgarity of her tone is what struck up the fresh conversation. She was unafraid to be angry at how she is being treated, and be open about those frustrations. She didn’t ask for pity: She asked to acknowledge the absurdity that fan culture has become. It can often be difficult for people to find sympathy in any sense for someone who lives without fear of financial decline and is constantly faced with opportunities others only dream of, but she isn’t telling her viewers that her life is in complete detriment; she’s saying she wants to be treated humanely. She speaks very frankly, and this directness is what I think viewers aren’t always open to hearing. There’s a human inability to reflect on the literal nature of actions when feeling a need to be in defense of one's own.
Chappell’s artistry is her career, and though there are so many other careers within the art industry, it’s the performers who are bled dry of having a life outside of work. Work becomes walking out of the house because someone has found their address or their parents’ address, or their second cousin twice removed’s address, and is expecting that when they run up with an iPhone camera in theri face that they’ll be met with a customer service smile. If it bothers you enough to dislike her character, without knowing anything about her, then disengage. Use the time away from her music to ponder on the personality you’ve created for this complete stranger. She doesn’t know you, you don’t know her, and that’s fine. What is so interesting about someone you’ve never met getting a cup of coffee? This does not devalue her art, because her art is not an all encapsulating understanding of her character. You can still have a flourished connection with the art itself without a parasocial relationship with the artist behind it.
It can be argued that, yes, this complete lack of privacy is a well-known part of becoming famous and should be expected. But does that expectation make it acceptable? Does that expectation explain the gravity of this fame?
Having more money than any human would ever need certainly takes the edge off life’s stresses, even those where one is deprived of the human right to privacy. I don’t think this conversation is necessarily about the comfort of celebrities, I think it’s about being in tune with the pure oddity that is obsessing over someone whom you know nothing about. I think it’s about being able to look at yourself and ask why you even want that right to their time and space.
Does the richness of the art rely on the pictures artists take with fans and how they react to a swarm of paparazzi? Or, does it rely on creative lyricism, hours spent mixing instruments to create distinct sound, re-imagining scripts to effectively turn oneself into another person and every other wonderful thing artists produce?
Is it possible to want fame without this extension of it? I think it is. I think it’s possible to be an artist and not want this inability to buy the head of garlic you forgot for a home-cooked pasta dish because of a herd of warm bodies asking for a selfie and furrowing an angry brow at your decline. Why are people mad at the decline? Truly, what the fuck do you care that you didn’t get that picture? People owe you nothing, regardless of their fame. Why are there these expectations for people?
This obsession with celebrities, particularly artists and actors in the Hollywood industry is weird, to put it simply. We don’t know these people and, to be fair, based on the records of celebrities who turn out to be pedophiles, abusive individuals, or bullies, why is it that we continue to think that we know them enough to idolize them and claw for acknowledgement? This is a stranger, and before complaining about a celebrity not being grateful for the life they have, stalkers, pestering and what-have-you, please consider why you’re so worried about celebrities at all. It’s very simple: Enjoy the art and recognize that this is a stranger who creates art you enjoy.
Comments