There are few celebrities who have been as vocal about their distaste for fame as Chappell Roan. This is not inherently a bad thing in the slightest—everyone, even celebrities, are entitled to privacy and human decency. Today’s unparalleled age of parasociality makes that harder to come by than ever, so I have no qualms with a popstar trying to set boundaries. Honestly, good for them. We don’t need another batch of Swifties. However, this hasn’t always been the greatest thing for Roan’s public perception. Each and every instance of pushing back against the machinery of fame has forced her into the limelight once more for yet another full media cycle of controversy. Does she handle these things perfectly? No, but who does? So, honestly, my reaction is typically “whatever.” Like: Kim, there’s people who are dying. We must have something better to talk about. Alas, Chappell Roan is under fire once more—and this time, it’s not just paparazzi or fans she’s being accused of hating. It’s children.
To be fair, the situation certainly doesn’t make her look great. Yesterday, Brazilian soccer star Jorginho Frello posted a long chunk of text on his Instagram story detailing his daughter’s less-than-stellar interaction with “an artist she really admires, or used to admire” (spoiler: the artist is Chappell Roan). In short, Frello and his family were eating breakfast at their hotel in São Paulo before the Lollapalooza BR festival, and his step-daughter—Ada Law, Catherine Harding’s kid with Jude Law—was overjoyed to see her favorite artist sitting a few feet away. And, in a genuinely immense display of tact for an 11-year-old, Ada didn’t even go over to say hi; she simply walked by the table to confirm for herself that the shock of red hair at the nearby table did, in fact, belong to Roan. Shortly after, however, “a large security guard” stalked over to Frello’s family’s table and “began speaking in an extremely aggressive manner to both my wife and daughter, saying that she shouldn’t allow my daughter to ‘disrespect’ or ‘harass’ other people,” he wrote—a particularly wild thing to say, considering all Ada did was walk “past a table and [look] to see if someone is there.” The guard threatened to file a complaint with the hotel, while Ada sat there in tears, “extremely shaken.” The family did not end up attending Lollapalooza BR (which they were attending as Ada’s birthday present); the experience was “ruined,” according to Ada’s mother, Catherine Harding.
After an entirely fake and very crude “response” from Roan made the rounds—courtesy of a rando on Twitter being an asshole, I guess—the singer herself eventually spoke up, lying in a bed and talking straight to the camera in a pair of videos posted to her own Instagram story. Essentially, she insists she was unaware of the entire encounter, and that the security guard (who was not her personal security) acted of his own volition: “I didn’t even see. I didn’t even see a woman and a child. Like, I did not. No one came up to me. No one bothered me. […] I did not ask the security guard to go up and talk to this mother and child. I did not. They did not come up to me. They weren’t doing anything. It’s unfair for security to just assume someone doesn’t have good intentions when they have no reason to believe because there’s no action even taken.”
Harding, who also goes by Cat Cavelli, cast some doubt on this in her take on the events: “100 percent, this security guard was not a security guard of the hotel […] I don’t know if he was [Roan’s] personal security guard, but he was with her. That is all I know. Did she send him to do it? Again, I don’t know.” So…if Chappell Roan didn’t hire him, and the hotel didn’t hire him, then who the hell did? Is he just a random guy in a security guard costume who stands around in fancy hotels because he gets his kicks from making kids cry?
Roan apologized to the family for the incident as well: “I do not hate people who are fans of my music. I do not hate children. Like, that is crazy. I’m sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming something, that you would do something, and if you felt uncomfortable that makes me really sad. You did not deserve that.”
In all, it really does feel like a little bit of a nothingburger—either Chappell Roan sent a security guard to yell at the kid or she didn’t, but either way, the damage was done, an apology was given, and ideally, we’re all to move on with our lives. To quote Harding’s own response to the situation: “I didn’t realize it would get this crazy.” Right?
As far as the story itself goes, I don’t think there’s much more to say. After all, unless that rogue security guard decides to come forward with his side, it’ll remain a solely he-said-she-said situation. Did Chappell Roan see the kid before siccing this security guard on her, or was that a highly unnecessary preventative measure taken by the guard himself (perhaps driven by his awareness of his client’s frustration with being stopped in public)? Who knows! I mean, I doubt that a security guard saw a celebrity’s child simply walk by the table without interacting with his boss whatsoever and said, “You know what? I’m going to earn my raise today,” before sauntering over to rip said kid a new one for committing the egregious crime of merely existing in Chappell Roan’s vicinity. But I also highly doubt Roan was sitting there like Cruella de Vil, haughtily extending a lone pointer finger toward whichever elementary schooler she wanted her goons to traumatize next. In all likelihood, it’s probably something in the middle—some misunderstanding born from casual callousness, maybe, but not outright cruelty.
But also, on some level… So what? Celebrities are notoriously not great people most of the time, and frankly, I’d rather have a popstar who yells at kids than a billionaire who rapes them—and considering who our president is, it seems like most of the country is pretty fine with the latter, so I don’t know why we’re throwing a hissy fit about the former. Well, I do know why, and it rhymes with the word “render”… but I digress.
I’d argue there’s another reason too, though: parasociality. Chappell Roan’s fanbase is overwhelmingly young, left-leaning, and—despite her best efforts—avidly parasocial. As I see it, that’s probably a large reason why every Chappell-related incident blows up the way it does: her fans have not only created an image of her in their minds that can do no wrong, but have invested a significant amount of their personal well-being into that persona. As a result, whenever possible evidence to the contrary presents itself, they hear the Kill Bill siren and go ballistic. Johnny Depp and his ilk (read: famous men who abuse women) just tend to not have those kinds of fanbases. (Honestly, most intense supporters of Depp’s these days probably like him because of the Amber Heard trial). That might be why this entire situation feels so ridiculous to me, someone who is happily not parasocial about Chappell Roan. I never put her on a pedestal in the first place, so there’s nowhere for her to fall. I like her music and all, but she’s still a celebrity—still a person—and I just don’t find it particularly shocking when any person, let alone a celebrity, is found being callous.
Don’t get me wrong, I hate “what-about-ism” as much as the next person. But, I mean, come on. I would eat my hat if there aren’t about ten other celebrities who have made kids cry in the past 48 hours. (It’s just that this time, the kid in question was another celebrity’s kid, so we’re hearing about it.) Like, we’ve got government employees terrorizing the children of immigrants and elected officials bombing primary schools. The absolute worst case scenario here is that a celebrity made a kid cry on purpose. Is that terrible? Of course! Should it result in days of rabid, utterly dominant online discourse and a lifetime ban from Todo Mundo No Rio (courtesy of the mayor of Rio de Janeiro himself)? Man, I don’t know.
People on Twitter are talking about Ada Law like she was strangled by Chappell Roan’s cold, dead, acrylic-nail’d hands in the middle of a hotel buffet. They’re posting photos of Ada grinning blissfully in the moment before disaster, like an In Memoriam post remembering a shooting victim after their death. It’s all a bit much, guys. I’m all for calling out bad behavior from celebs, this included, but the sheer intensity of the backlash here feels rather out-of-proportion, considering what many of Roan’s male peers have received for doing far worse—if having her security yell at a kid is considered proof that she regularly “terrorises young girls,” what should we call Chris Brown’s myriad allegations of rape, assault, and abuse? And on the other side of things, Roan’s insanely parasocial fanbase has been sending nonstop hate to an 11-year-oldwho didn’t even do anything wrong. More than anything, I just feel bad for Ada Law for being dragged into this excruciating, humiliating mess that’s being relitigated by the entire internet for days on end.
None of this, course, is to say that celebrities should get a free pass for being assholes simply because all celebrities are assholes. It’s just that, on the scale of celebrity-asshole-ism, I’m of the opinion that even if we were to assume the worst about Chappell Roan’s actions here, this situation—shitty as it would be—would still rank pretty dang low. If we’re all just champing at the bit for some celebrity discourse today, there are at least 50 men I’d like to see undergo trial-by-Twitter (and, in many cases, trial-by-real-jury) first, so let’s get on that instead. And maybe we could all just try being normal about things, for a change. Might be nice.
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