Chappell Roan trying to change the game

A year after Billie Eilish justified her baggy clothing by saying she "didn't want people to have access to [her] body, even visually," Chappell Roan is trying to take things a bit further by asserting that her fans don't own her and that she'll just up and quit if they don't back off.

The fact that she's doing this on TikTok starts to get into the complicated nature of what's going on here. When artists and celebrities are on social media sites and talk so directly to their fans as she does, it exacerbates the parasocial feelings that some fans already have, which were probably initiated by the unique and sometimes explicitly confessional aspects of her music and lyrics. But how else to communicate that she is indeed a person and wants to be treated as one? Hard to unravel. it's similar to Eilish's dilemma about sexualization: how to feel positive about people praising her baggy clothes when she feels there's an element of slut-shaming to it?

Of course there are always the commenters and even music writers who'll say that she knew what she was getting into, that this is fame. But fame these days is a different beast, and you're gonna get it from all sides if you're a young woman (from the girls your music is aimed at because you spoke so directly to them, and from men because uhhh we're creeps). Despite being discovered on YouTube, Roan seems like a pop star who belongs in a pre-social-media era, when her stage name could've been the only thing people knew about her. But in the 2020s, Stan isn't even an outlier anymore.

I don't really have a point, not sure I even have an opinion, but I do feel for these young women. Sure, they wanted fame, but for an artist that usually means "sharing the stuff I make with people," not sharing their entire existence.