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On Friday, a few days after Chappell Roan made her videos calling out the normalization of celebrity "abuse," "harassment," and "stalking," I saw Rosalyn Drexler's painting "Marilyn Pursued by Death" at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
In it, a photograph of Marilyn Monroe running away from the paparazzi has been blacked out to leave just one man chasing her. The picture takes on a new, sinister quality in this light, highlighting just how strange it is that images of celebrities being pursued by hounds of people are seen as normal within a group and celebrity context.
I bring this up because this is a painting from 1963. The discussion over our culture's treatment of women has literally been going on for decades. But replace the paparazzo with an extreme fan, and many people will justify it.
Chappell has made two different statements that set boundaries with entitled fans, which have gone on to be mocked by others who twist her words to compare her against an ideal of what they think other female celebrities are like.
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Though Chappell has also received a lot of support, I want to highlight that the backlash she's receiving is also alarmingly mainstream. Posts of Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj on a red carpet and dancing with a fan respectively have all gone viral with some variation of the words, "Chappell Roan would have started sobbing, ran home, made 4 Tik toks, and 2 insta posts."
The idea that Chappell is reacting excessively to polite fan behavior is rotting its way through X. One post with 27k likes has a video of a woman with red hair (Beyoncé in the movie Obsessed) beating up another woman with the caption, "Fan: hii can I get a picture." A video of Sabrina Carpenter smiling for photos with fans in New York with the caption, "now THIS is how you react when someone asks you for a selfie… take notes chappell" hit 21k likes (ignoring the fact that Sabrina looks mildly uncomfortable when the person with the camera says they take videos of "all the hot girls in Soho").
One of the most disturbing posts, which has 60k likes, is a repost of Lana Del Rey with a cancer patient along with the caption, "chappell roan would have unplugged the machine."
All of these posts grossly twist Chappell's words: She isn't talking about people politely asking for a photo or attending pre-arranged press ops. "I don't want whatever the fuck you think you're supposed to be entitled to whenever you see a celebrity. I don't give a fuck if you think it's selfish of me to say no to a photo, or your time, or for a hug," she said in one of her videos. "I'm allowed to say no to creepy behavior, okay."
It should be mind-numbingly obvious that the key message in Chappell's words is one of combatting harassment. As she put it on Instagram, "I've been in too many nonconsensual physical and social interactions and I just need to lay it out and remind you, women don't owe you shit."
The word "nonconsensual" shows why comparing Chappell against other famous women is transparently wrong. News flash: It is fine for one woman to be okay with one thing and another woman to be not okay with the same thing. If a man tried touching me under the guise of, "Well, my ex loved this!" we would likely call it assault.
Also, even a hint of thinking about the famous women Chappell is being compared to shows that they don't have the best relationship with fame. Case in point: A clip of a teenage Taylor Swift talking about how it's "not hard at all" to be famous resurfaced and was contrasted against Chappell.
A few things: A) Taylor has released song after song since then that talk about how alienating fame is, B) Taylor's ascent to fame was more gradual, and C) Taylor BARELY interacts with the public anymore. Geez, I wonder why?
People may dismiss this as stan culture running amok, but I think it's important to address any entitlement over women's bodies and time. We're barely past #FreeBritney: What, if anything, have we learned as a culture? Are we ready to reconcile ourselves with the fact that social media has made things worse in many ways? Is it time for us to consider how much progress we've really made when it comes to the lived realities of people's mental health?
On the plus side, I'm glad that Chappell's comments have also opened up the conversation for other artists. As Paramore's Hayley Williams responded, "This happens to every woman i know from this business, myself included. social media has made this worse. i’m really thankful chappell is willing to address it in a real way, in real time. it’s brave and unfortunately necessary."
Besides, how many times has every woman basically had to deal with alarmingly similar things? Since March*, I've been catcalled five times (including outside my house), had gross comments from two different delivery guys, and had dick pics sent to me by a Zoom bomber in a therapy session. And I'm not even famous!
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