Society Hates Women: Media Training, Nonchalance, and Queerness

In 2009, the same year as her infamous, gory VMAs performance, Lady Gaga pinpointed society’s problem with women: they dare to do things that the media only shows men doing. 

“If I was a guy, and I was sitting here with a cigarette in my hand, grabbing my crotch, and talking about how I make music ‘cause I love fast cars and f***ing girls, you’d call me a rockstar. But when I do it in my music and in my videos, because I’m a female, because I make pop music, you’re judgemental, and you say that it is distracting. I’m just a rockstar,” she said.

Women in the music industry do not exclusively need to be quiet, prim, and proper. They do not need to emulate the seemingly exponentially rising “trad wife” subservience; they do not need the even, breathy “Fundie” voice. Following this set of rules is far easier than the more sinister reality: women in pop culture must play a guessing game of what archetype society wants them to fit into. 

See Chappell Roan, a lesbian drag queen rightfully turned all-around queer icon. Aside from small debates about the validity of her sexuality, she was welcomed with open arms by the queer community, getting a shout-out from Elton John and becoming Sasha Colby’s drag daughter. She was your favorite artist’s favorite artist, topping charts not in spite of, but because of her unique experience with lesbianism. 

That is, until she spoke out against fans and parasocial relationships. In two videos posted on TikTok, she reminded fans that she was a stranger to them and that no one should feel entitled to her time and her personal information. 

The negative backlash mostly came from two places, different sides of the same coin:

1. She was rude, swearing during her videos, and;
2. She should be grateful for her fans, as she would be nowhere if it weren’t for them. 

Chappell Roan standing up for herself and not letting fans and the media dictate her rise to fame does not fit into the mold that was made for her. Through her music and few interviews, she has been categorized in fans’ minds as bold, feminist, and trailblazing. However, because she is a woman, she cannot be too bold, swearing in her videos or shouting at a crowd of fans, or too feminist, sticking up for herself in the face of parasocial relationships and therefore other female celebrities who have been harmed by fans and paparazzi (famously Lady Gaga and Britney Spears), or too trailblazing, using the word “lesbian” instead of “queer,” as the word has a stigma around it that has been insufficiently addressed. 

Claims that marginalized artists should be unconditionally grateful for their fans are dangerous. In her second video addressing fans’ behavior, Chappell Roan makes a point to call what she does a “career field,” and says: “I don’t care that this crazy type of behavior comes along with the job… That does not make it okay. That doesn’t make it normal.” 

Why is it mostly women that have to address dangerous behavior from fans? Men are approached by fans in public, and men are hit on, and men are stalked. Why must women carry the burden of correcting people’s behavior, both for themselves and for everyone in the entertainment industry?

After a period of heightened emotions in the west, from the pandemic to racial and feminist reckonings to economic troubles, people have become exhausted and careless. In late-stage capitalism, adults cannot afford to live, and their children are watching them struggle. 

To cope, people have turned to nonchalance, a buzzword transformed into a form of higher being that people are aspiring to. And because every action has an equal and opposite reaction, this performative carelessness has sprouted a deep caring for art and politics that has come across as ingenuine (think “thought daughter” and hot topics in poetry such as the two-headed calf, cannibalism as a metaphor for love, dogs, pomegranates, and now geese that people obsess over and drop within a week). It is easy to make fun of trends, both their actual content and how embarrassing it is to put everything into a trend only for it to never be seen again in a month. 

The decline in individuality and the increase in “rebrands” and “aesthetics” is mostly seen in girls in their teens and women in their twenties. To avoid the taunting that comes with following trends, women have inadvertently latched even tighter onto deeply caring about subjects in their exact niche. This is a double edged sword. Women are judged for following trends and carelessly overconsuming, and they are also judged for caring too deeply about their chosen curated hobbies and interests. 

It is impossible to fit into a mold that society sets for you when there are so many molds to choose from, and fitting too perfectly into a mold is “pretentious.” 

What happens when you can’t find a mold that you fit into? You spend hours combing through the internet, swiping through TikTok slideshows about fashion trends hated and loved by a random sixteen-year-old, curating Pinterest boards of aesthetics that have already been churned out time and time again with the same “-core” ending. Making a mold is terrifying, but this is the reality for so many queer women. 

The shame from both society and their own community, infiltrated by misogyny, prevents queer women from public innovation. This is why they take on the aesthetics of their favorite characters or musicians who, by queer standards, are not doing anything abnormal. 

Queer women are desperate to fit in with both queer people and women as a whole, so they are forced to oscillate between molds until they discover that combining two and calling it their own is the easiest way to be unique. See the ever-loathed “futch,” a combination of two words historically used to describe gender roles lesbians subscribed to in the face of oppression, “femme” and “butch.” The identity implies a middle ground between femme and butch, something of their own invention, a mold that can be anything. In queer spaces where they feel safe, they are allowed to be more masculine, but with non-queer women, they can jump back to looking “normal” without having to explain themselves—explain the aesthetic mold they were forced to choose. This identity seemingly lacks complication, lacks education on the history of “femme” and “butch,” and therefore is easily understandable. It’s careless, and it’s cool.

And the perfect woman, the part of the mold that all women have to squeeze into, is careless and cool. Not too mean, not too ungrateful, not too passionate, and not too queer. 

• #feminism
• #media
• #queer
• chappellroan
• lesbian