In 2023, Chappell Roan released her debut album “The Rise and Fall of the Midwest Princess,” a title that would become eerily prophetic of what the next year would look like for her. By July, it seemed like she was truly destined for the one of the coveted main pop girl slots. Despite not even being a headliner, she had one of the most attended daytime sets in Lollapalooza History. “Hot To Go” went from being a fun track on TikTok to being played at college football games just one year after her debut album.
Chappell truly tapped into the cultural zeitgeist and was known for being super active online, especially on TikTok, where she mainly promoted her music early in her career. She’s witty, self deprecating, and unabashedly herself and she’s not afraid to let people know that. She’s been very straightforward about her feelings towards creepy fan interactions, her own personal politics, and her place as a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community. Her fans adored her authenticity and brash personality, but that’s now become the thing they resent her for. She became famous so quickly and people tend to forget just how difficult it would be to go from being kind of famous to your small fanbase, to being one of the most talked about women of the summer.
Although it’s alluring, the constant attention is certainly not easy. She’s the kind of celebrity so many people online begged for in a time where we crave authenticity, but we weren’t truly ready to handle it when we got one. Between canceling her performance at “All Things Go” to protect her mental health, to the backlash she got for setting healthy boundaries with her fans, to the entire uproar of her choosing not to endorse a candidate in the election after a resurfaced quote was posted on the X account Pop Flop. Yes, she was quite blunt in her delivery and many people saw her answers as impulsive, but her statements by themselves didn’t seem too unreasonable. It seems like overnight she went from everyone’s favorite new pop girl to “not being cut out for it” as the internet pointed and laughed. But why is this?
It seems like every single year, a new emerging female star takes over the world, but only for a minute. Every day on Twitter and TikTok for the past couple of years I’ve seen person after person beg for more authentic celebrities, demanding “we want ‘real’, not manufactured ones.” Then when they get these “real stars,” they put them on a pedestal and anytime they slip up they subject them to public stoning via the internet. I fear we’re slowly slipping back into the 2000s/TMZ era of toxic tabloid culture, but instead of TMZ and Perez Hilton, it’s self-righteous internet users.
I remember after everything that came to light about Britney Spears and her conservatorship in 2020, the culture truly reevaluated how the media treated her and just how nasty everyone was to her on an international stage. The name calling, the demeaning harassment, and just the overall hatred towards her for no particular reason other than her alleged “vapidness” and “ditsiness.” It was truly weird, and even after this public reevaluation of how we treat young female stars, it’s back in full force like nothing ever happened.
I’ll never forget how the internet treated Rachel Zegler. Zegler was truly on the rise pretty much all of 2023, until she wasn’t. She had starred in a remake of “West Side Story,” was gearing up to be in arguably one of the most anticipated films of the year, “The Hunger Games: Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes,” and had just been announced to play Snow White in Disney’s live action remake of the fairy tale. But, after a clip of her from 2022 where she told Entertainment Weekly the original Snow White film frightened her as a child and said “I watched it once and never picked it up again” as well as discussing the new “feminist direction” the film would taking, proclaiming that “it’s no longer 1937 and she’s not going to saved by the prince” instead opting for a more progressive angle, something Disney has been doing in all of their live action remakes. For some odd reason, this clip started spreading like wildfire all over TikTok with many people proclaiming her as “ungrateful” and “anti-feminist.” Many people co-opted feminist terminology to attack a young actress of color and add onto the vitriol she was already receiving by taking the role as a young Latina woman. She is still working and performing, and it seems like the hate didn’t truly affect her work as she is debuting on Broadway this fall in a production of “Romeo and Juliet,” but it’s a sad case of the public stoning of young female celebrities at their peak of popularity. She rose above it, but the impact is still there and it’s truly concerning.
I’m not dismissing actual criticism of female artists. They’re still celebrities and if they exhibit actual problematic behavior that’s harmful then it needs to be called out. But what I’m talking about is what I like to call “public nitpicking.” So many people online are using this “moral superiority” way of criticizing people online and it’s getting away from actually focusing on truly problematic figures in pop culture. It’s a growing reminder of just how short the time window is to be a successful woman in pop culture. They are beloved until they are “too” successful, then it’s time to “humble” them and bring them back to earth because “the fame is getting to their head.” It’s so rare to see a female celebrity who truly makes it through their career without a period of unnecessary hatred and vitriol. Although there are many valid criticisms of Taylor Swift, most of the popular vitriol towards her is rooted in petty grievances and misogyny. It seems like she’s fully made it to the top and has become one of the most famous women alive, but just last year people were mad at her for being “too overexposed” and “ruining football,” and yet despite her massive influence and success it truly seems like she’s headed for another “Reputation” era, where she went from the biggest artist on earth to one of the most hated in a year.
These public online stonings of female celebrities are even worse if it’s a woman of color, because the window of acceptance is even shorter for them. Over the past couple of weeks, it’s been quite startling to see the internet turn the horrifying allegations against rapper P. Diddy into yet another avenue to tear down Beyoncé. It seems the more successful she becomes, the more hated she is by everyone and it’s so tiring. People have used the uproar surrounding this high profile case to promote conspiracy theories about Beyoncé’s involvement in the death of the late R&B Singer, Aaliyah, as a way to boost her own career.
This theory, along with illuminati and other popular theories, have been used to discredit her success for years. It’s insane to me that during a major court case where a powerful person has inflicted true harm onto so many victims, many being women, that the main person being blamed all over TikTok and X is another woman, simply because she has so much success and power. A woman who is disrespected not only in her own industry, but by people all over the internet since she became as successful as she is now. She might be incredibly successful, but that doesn’t stop people from trying to “humble” her every day online and in the media. It’s almost like the world saw this successful Black woman thriving and thought that it was too much, so it’s time to tear her down. It’s beyond misogynistic and just plain insulting.
We as a culture both online and in person have got to do better with how we speak about female celebrities and just how we treat them online. It’s so disheartening to see just how short the window of acceptability is for female celebrities, even the most successful ones. They’re stoned for either being “too successful” or they’re just thrown aside and ignored until the next one comes along. It’s a sad cycle and I’m frankly sick of it, knowing that there are so many male celebrities who have done and said much worse and still have thriving careers and loyal fanbases. Now when it comes to harmful behavior, then we need to have that conversation and truly condemn those actions, but this public nitpicking attitude needs to end now. Using feminist talking points and progressive language as means to nitpick another woman and uplift someone’s own superiority needs to end too because it’s misusing the language and movements behind them to just be hateful online, and this goes beyond just speaking on female celebrities, it goes for our everyday lives as well.
There are some true conversations that need to be had, but grilling and tearing down these women for simply being successful and speaking their mind in a positive way is so unnecessary and the misogyny must end. I’m so tired of having a conversation about treating young female stars better when they debut every time another one either goes through something traumatic or dies young. Let’s celebrate them while they’re here and stop repeating this cycle. I don’t want Chappell Roan or Rachel Zegler to become yet another cautionary tale of a fallen female celebrity, then get their public reappraisal when it’s way too late. Let’s stop this behavior once and for all.