Renowned pop artist Chappell Roan has received drastic responses to her criticism of the U.S. government recently, with countless people either supporting or decrying her hesitancy to endorse a candidate in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. The conversation has now evolved slightly beyond her own position, but it does tell us plenty about our relationship with celebrities and what we believe their social responsibilities need to be.
On Sept. 24, Roan posted a video on Tiktok explaining her decision to not endorse either candidate for president, arguing that an endorsement would not necessarily imply she was voting either way. She made a point to say she would vote for Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, then followed with her own displeasure and disapproval of the candidate and her political decisions.
The pop icon has been a rising star, garnering support from the LGBTQ+ community and standing in solidarity with a number of humanitarian causes, including calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel has been widely criticized for using indiscriminate firepower to level cities that still contained civilians.
Roan’s own criticism of VP Harris stems from the U.S. administration’s financial support of Israel, specifically $3.5 billion in military aid. Roan did go on to denounce former President Donald Trump for similar policy decisions, describing him as the worst choice of two already poor options.
Reactions on TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) argued that, with the upcoming U.S. election, Roan not siding with the “better candidate” was irresponsible, as one of the options could potentially rob U.S. citizens of important civil rights or even arguably put our own constitution at risk.
While the nuance in her statement is worth considering, I believe many of us are ignorant to a remarkably damaging trend in our culture: parasocialism.
The Thunderword’s own Genna Tobin thoroughly examined what a parasocial relationship is in early 2024, highlighting the unhealthy one-sided dynamic between a public figure and a member of said public who may become inappropriately attached to them.
In the case of Roan, it is easy to get bogged down in seemingly good-faith arguments about the outcome of the presidential election, considering it will affect so many lives in the matter of a few months. The overlooked responsibility of the public is to avoid our pitfalls from past examples, because the Pink Pony Club singer is not the first young woman to experience the wrath of the internet or the tabloids.
The U.S. has a poor track record of treating women in pop culture fairly. Britney Spears, Simone Biles, Jessica Simpson, Anna Nicole Smith, are just a few of the countless examples of what this parasocial obsession can do to a single person’s health.
We have all gotten used to jumping on bandwagons and criticizing celebs, but we as individuals have not yet evolved to hear from hundreds of thousands of strangers at a time, especially when the messaging can so easily delve into harassment and threats.
Perhaps the most well-adjusted commentary on this story has been the recent Saturday Night Live (SNL) Season 50 premiere, which saw cast member Bowen Yang don a hippo costume and perform a skit at the Weekend Update desk as the famous Moo Deng.
Yang delivered a bombastic performance as the viral hippo while continuously quoting Roan’s recent plea for privacy. What may seem as a light ribbing from a comedian becomes a show of support if you step back and consider the context of the sketch itself.
Some news outlets have incorrectly assumed that the hit SNL piece was meant to mock Roan, though it just takes a few minutes of digging into his own podcast Las Culturistas, which he hosts with Matt Rogers, where Yang makes multiple comments in solidarity with Roan, as well as taking his own mental health break in 2023, citing experiences with depersonalization.
The fact that Yang used a viral zoo animal to encapsulate the same struggles Roan has been facing should not be overlooked, either. The juxtaposition is clearly a commentary on how the public has essentially been treating our celebrities as zoo attractions, robbing them of the dignity that we would expect for ourselves.
We are missing the plot when an entire country can – through the singular lens of TikTok – attempt to put the fear of god into a 26-year-old woman who has only recently skyrocketed to the international stage over the past year.
To assert that Roan, who has not committed any crimes, but simply expressed a frustration for U.S. geopolitical policy, should be ostracized is an overreaction from the American public that does not inspire a conversation, but delegitimizes the opinion of a single voter for the express reason that she is too popular to carry her own view of the world.
The national dialogue surrounding our two-party system and its flaws is a seemingly never ending one, but we CAN control how we have these conversations and what kind of nuance we allow ourselves to entertain.
Talk show host and arch nemesis of introspection Bill Maher recently claimed that Roan’s arguments against the U.S. foreign policy were nonsensical because of anti-LGBTQ sentiment in the middle east. His stance implied her protest should be considered ineffectual, since she was arguing for the rights of a culture who may persecute her.
Maher, a 68 year-old man, considered it appropriate to imply Roan would meet a violent outcome, should she not have the U.S. as protection from a country he deems uncivilized: a tasteless opinion delivered with the subtle political nuance of a Diet Coke and Mentos enema.
We as a culture get glib and self-righteous when we decide that we are in the right, and that is not a strong basis for stripping a human being of their own freedom of speech, let alone sending them threats of harm on TikTok. People should be kinder to women online, and – I would argue – grown men should simply have less opinions about women online altogether.
As it stands, Roan has delayed some performances and requested that fans be courteous if they see her in public. She asked that they call her by her stage name, Chappell Roan, in lieu of her legal name because it makes her feel safer.
Politics are threaded into everything we do, and are nigh inescapable, but an inalienable fact of life is that personal boundaries are simply not something that can be negotiated. It should be fairly obvious that the treatment of Roan is not a new phenomenon, but it should be an extinct one.
Cam Lyons has been an editor for the Thunderword since 2023. Their short story blog, “Loser Pulp“, is released twice a month.