On March 21, Brazilian soccer player Jorginho released a statement on his Instagram accusing Chappell Roan of sending her bodyguard to berate his 11-year-old daughter, after she merely walked by Roan’s table at a hotel breakfast and smiled.
Immediately, the internet was outraged. Roan, infamous for talking back to paparazzi and setting “boundaries” with fans, was painted as a child-hating bitch. Fans of Roan called her detractors misogynistic or homophobic. Roan asserted that the security guard was not hers, but the damage was done. I ask the people: Why should we care?
The times have shifted when it comes to celebrities. Perhaps influenced by Tumblr’s infamous “Your Fav Is Problematic” blog, which chronicled every instance a certain celebrity was racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, etc., we have begun to expect celebrities to be our close confidants and friends. It’s not asinine to expect a celebrity to have decent morals when it comes to marginalized groups; but this thinking has evolved. We now expect them to be kind, gentle and caring people that we ourselves would want in our personal lives. We want them to take pictures with us and let those pictures start a friendship. We want them to agree with us on our favorite colors and our favorite animals. If they don’t, something’s wrong with them. Let’s remove their music from Spotify in protest!
Take Doechii’s recent comments on cats. The Grammy award-winning rapper said that cats “genuinely aren’t friendly animals,” and people were up in arms. Doechii was called a misogynist and was even told she doesn’t care about consent, all because she called cats unfriendly. Meanwhile, these comments fell on deaf ears. Someone with the wealth and access that Doechii has won’t release a statement groveling on their hands and knees for disliking cats. Really, no one should. Yet, we have begun to expect this from the artists whose work we adore.
We simply know too much about celebrities, and that makes us forget that they are not like us. Because we see their funny TikToks and their “relatable” interviews on podcasts, we feel a kinship with famous people, even though there is none. We see the celebrity-fan relationship as two-sided — where they must respond to our overzealous outpourings of love in equal magnitude — but this simply isn’t reality. Celebrities provide us with art and entertainment. We provide them with money. That’s all there is to it, and expecting anything else gets us into deranged states of mind.
The existence of “fan-wars” is an example of the ridiculous lengths we have gone to uplift our favorite celebrities and downplay our least favorites. When Roan was put on blast recently, “stans” of other artists began posting pictures of their idols with children to show that they’re better and kinder than Roan. Isolated moments were used to illustrate everything about these people’s characters. This is an incredibly tame example, too. In Lana del Rey and Ethel Cain’s now-famous beef, fans of del Rey often threw transmisogynistic attacks at Cain and her fans, in a twisted attempt to defend del Rey from Cain’s alleged abuse — that is, a tweet in which Cain posted lyrics from one of del Rey’s songs with a GIF from Family Guy underneath.
To prove our love for these celebrities, we’ve gone into psychosis. We attack our fellow people with anything from petty insults to full-on slurs, because we want to show our loyalty to people that don’t know we exist. We spend our precious hours with our thumbs furiously typing the next offense, because we won’t let celebrities just be celebrities.
One of the biggest controversies that Roan has faced came from her comments on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, in which she said people should stop looking to celebrities for all the answers about what’s happening in the world. She’s not wrong. Celebrities are inherently out of touch. We can’t look to them to be our heroes and activists, because most of them would glare at us on the street for asking for a picture. And when we do look to them for our political ideals, do we forget the communities we’re meant to be supporting along the way? Is reposting wealthy celebrities’ Instagram posts more important?
I don’t mean to say we should “separate the art from the artist.” This phrase, often used to defend abusive men in Hollywood and the music industry, goes against my own morals; I will not financially support someone who is abusive, someone who’s racist, who supports conversion therapy. Roan and Doechii, to my knowledge, are none of these things. I disagree with Doechii’s stance on cats, but I will still blast “ALTEREGO” at a pregame. I think kindness towards children is one of the most important forms of kindness there is, but “I heard you like magic / I got a wand and a rabbit” will always be an iconic lyric.
I believe we have more important things to worry about. Instead of feigning concern about how a celebrity is acting on a day-to-day basis, we should think about how we interact with the people around us. We should move through the world with kindness and empathy, not with biting insults towards strangers online because they don’t like our favorite singer. The more we view our peers as the celebrities they do or do not endorse, the more we chip away at the very social connections that keep us alive.
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