Chappell Roan has already made it pretty clear that she would prefer for the public to stay out of her personal life, so why is there an increased demand for her — and other celebrities — to publicly specify which presidential candidate she plans to vote for?
Throughout her meteoric rise to fame, there has been a barrage of online posts analyzing, dissecting and prosecuting every interview of the 26-year-old singer, with many public grievances against Roan centering on the "Good Luck Babe!" singer's politics.
Roan — who grew up in the Midwest and identifies as a lesbian — is a vocal progressive, championing causes like the pro-Palestine movement and various LGBTQ+ causes by supporting local drag queens and denouncing growing transphobic laws against children and people across the United States. She even refused to perform at the White House during Pride Month due to the Biden administration's Gaza foreign policy.
Roan's leftist political stance — shared by many other Gen Zers — has caused a stir online, with critics viewing her disapproval of both major political parties in the presidential election as playing "both sides." This has led to the false assumption that Roan is a Republican, despite her widely reported progressive stances, and the heat of the discourse caused her to drop out of the All Things Go Music Festival, where she was scheduled to perform over the weekend.
“I apologize to people who have been waiting to see me in NYC & DC this weekend at All Things Go, but I am unable to perform,” Roan wrote in a post to Instagram on Friday. “Things have gotten overwhelming over the past few weeks and I am really feeling it. I feel pressures to prioritize a lot of things right now and I need a few days to prioritize my health.”
But why did it have to come to this?
As Roan has established ironclad boundaries with the entertainment industry, her fans and the internet, she has been facing an unrelenting stream of criticism deadset on silencing her sense of personhood and progressive politics and values. Despite the white noise and the growing parasocial hatred inflicted on Roan, she isn't an artist who can be muzzled — in actuality, it has only made her beliefs more steadfast in a political system and discourse that grows increasingly unruly.
Roan says there are "problems on both sides" — and there are
Unfortunately for Roan, an interview with The Guardian where she stated her gripes with the U.S. government was clipped online and spurred a growing hate campaign against the singer. In the interview, she explained her disillusionment with the American political system, saying, “I have so many issues with our government in every way. There are so many things that I would want to change. So I don’t feel pressured to endorse someone."
Accusations of the singer's views ignited discourse online over one particular part of that interview where she said, "There’s problems on both sides. I encourage people to use your critical thinking skills, use your vote – vote small, vote for what’s going on in your city.”
“How are you queer, an ardent defender of the drag community and somehow a ‘both sides are bad’ person?” a post with millions of impressions prodded in the wake of the controversy surrounding that.
Others compared the situation to the outrage around Taylor Swift's friendship with potential Trumper, Brittany Mahomes.
“The same people giving Chappell the benefit of the doubt and not attacking her character for her ‘neutral’ stance in this very crucial U.S. election were crucifying Taylor for greeting [Brittany Mahomes] at an event and not providing an endorsement on their chosen timeline. got it," one person wrote in a post to X.
Attempting to clarify her statement about not endorsing Harris, a heated and frustrated Roan took to TikTok to reiterate her political stances in two videos, which only added to the controversy.
She explained that “endorsing and voting are completely different," saying, "I don’t agree with a lot of what is going on with, like, policies. Like, obviously, f**k the policies on the right, but also f**k some of the policies on the left. That’s why I can’t endorse.”
“I’m not gonna settle for what the options are that are in front of me, and you are not gonna make me feel bad for that,” Roan added. “So yeah, I’m voting for f***ing Kamala, but I’m not settling for what has been offered, because that’s questionable.”
The singer emphasized that there is room for nuance when discussing the issues of a two-party system, saying, “So yeah, there are huge problems on both. You know what is right and wrong and so do I. F**k Trump for fucking real, but f**k some of the s**t that has gone down in the Democratic party that has failed people like me and you — and, more so, Palestine, and more so, every marginalized community in the world.”
Aimed at her critics, who claim she is playing both sides, Roan said, “No, no, no, this is not me playing both sides. This is me questioning both sides because this is what we have in front of us."
The singer received the brunt of America's jarring political discourse. It has become so warped that Roan was pushed to the brink to clarify herself to people looking to misinterpret her words when her track record speaks for itself. Roan's politics have been far from neutral — they have, actually, been the most consistent thing about her platform.
Roan told Rolling Stone that she originally planned to agree to the White House gig but would refuse to perform and protest by reading “poems from Palestinian women."
"I am not going to be a monkey for Pride,” she said. Worth noting here that the current administration walked back a statement about gender-affirming surgery for trans children a month after she was asked to perform at the White House.
“Thank God I didn’t go because they just made a huge statement about trans kids," she said at that time.
Roan isn't the only young progressive person concerned about trans rights, Palestinian liberation and rights, and the U.S.'s involvement in the war in Gaza. Gen Zers like Roan have similar views.
Pew Research Center stated in a study that young Americans under 30 are more likely to sympathize with the Palestinian plight. The research also found that 36% of people found the Biden administration favored Israel over Palestine. This has posed a threat to Democrats' grasp of the presidency in the 2024 election because young people were a large key voting block that secured Biden's win against Donald Trump in 2020.
Roan pointed out in her statement, “There is no way I can stand behind some of the left’s completely transphobic and completely genocidal views." Despite young people's dissatisfaction with the political system, Roan stated she doesn't "want people to settle with what we have" but still encouraged people to vote because it "is all we have right now in the system, and so I encourage it yet again."
People in our political discourse will habitually lament about single-issue voters every election cycle — ignoring the importance of acknowledging that these progressive struggles are all connected. Single-issue voters — conservative, liberal and independent— have helped protect and ratify abortion laws across the Midwest. These supposed single-issue voters are shaping election results as there is a growing movement in the uncommitted voting bloc. These voters are determined to bolster their voices about the war in Gaza and the U.S.'s continued involvement, which many worry will not change if Harris is in office as she is viewed by some as a staunch Israel supporter.
Harris' policies should be criticized by the likes of someone like Roan, who is a visible figure in our zeitgeist. Moreover, Harris has openly reiterated her support for fracking, stricter immigration policies and expanding our military. And yet, Harris has made for entertaining television as a more palpable politician than Biden, with her boisterous laugh, “brat summer" memes and even using Roan's song "Femininomenon" in TikToks.
Why do people care about celebrity endorsements anyway?
The baffling response to Roan's progressive politics is a part of this need for celebrities to perform left-leaning politics. Long before Swift became viewed by many as the ideal liberal celebrity, the singer was famously mum on politics, which led to years of speculation about her being a secret conservative. Swift surprised everyone by coming out as a Democrat during the 2018 midterms. But even Swift, who is perceived as the good liberal, gets rightfully skewered for her ties to Trump-supporting Mahomes.
While it makes sense that a superstar like Swift is held to higher standards about her politics than someone so new to fame as Roan is, it has become disheartening to see the only way the Democratic Party can rally its voters is to appeal to our American fascination with celebrity. Democrats are also urging Reggaeton artist Bad Bunny to endorse Harris to help her secure swing states like Pennsylvania that hold the third biggest population of Puerto Ricans outside of the territory.
Despite this pressure to perform politics, artists like Roan have rejected celebrity entirely and the additional responsibilities that come with the job. This makes her progressive stance on LGBTQ+ and Palestinian rights all the more personal and commendable. As Teen Vogue writer and editor Lex McMenamin wrote, "It should be a good thing that Roan is unwilling to use her platform to sell out any one marginalized identity just to throw her name in for a presidential candidate."
Even though people are lampooning the progressive for her refusal to endorse a candidate, her refusal and exasperation with our political and Hollywood systems show us Roan is questioning what is normalized to demand from a celebrity. Her noncompliance with what is expected is a gnarly insight into our sense of entitlement to her. Roan herself is engaging in our political discourse the way we all should with critical thought, nuance and lived experience as a marginalized person.
"That’s not normal. That’s weird," she said in a TikTok last month talking about fans encroaching on her personal boundaries— little did she know how bad it could get, or how political.
