Over the weekend, singer Chappell Roan came under fire after Brazilian football player Jorginho Frello posted a statement on his Instagram Story claiming that Roan’s security team mistreated his 11-year-old stepdaughter at a hotel in São Paulo. He alleges that while the singer was having breakfast, his stepdaughter (who is also Jude Law’s daughter) spotted her, walked past her table and smiled at her. This resulted in the security guard supposedly chastising the girl and speaking to her “extremely aggressively”, which left her “shaken” and in tears. Frello concluded his statement to Roan, writing: “Without your fans, you would be nobody. And to the fans, she does not deserve your affection.” 

Enormous backlash ensued, with Jorginho’s Story triggering outrage across social media. Even the mayor of Rio de Janeiro entered the fray: Eduardo Cavaliere took to X to essentially ban Roan from performing at the city’s Todo Mundo no Rio shows, and invited Jorginho’s stepdaughter to be the guest of honour at the festival in May.

Roan responded to the allegations yesterday (March 22) via Instagram, claiming that she didn’t even see the child or her mother while at breakfast, that she never asked her security to go up to them, and that the guard who did accost the girl wasn’t even employed by her. “I didn’t even see a woman and a child. No one came up to me, no one bothered me,” she said. “I’m sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming something, that you would do something. If you felt uncomfortable, that makes me really sad. You did not deserve that.” 

To say that this situation has been blown out of proportion is an understatement. In the video she posted on Instagram, Roan stressed that the security guard who spoke to the young girl was not part of her personal security detail – and yet, her critics are using this as yet another example of how she is a mean-spirited and nasty person who hates children. 

This is already a popular narrative that surrounds the 28-year-old. Back in 2024, she yelled at a photographer at the VMAs, who was overheard telling her to “Shut the fuck up”. The clip of her standing up for herself went viral as she screamed back: “You shut the fuck up. No, not me bitch”. Since then, Roan has stood her ground against invasive paparazzi and the “creepy behaviour” of entitled fans, because she does not graciously accept the negative aspects of her profession: the self-abnegation, lack of privacy, the pretence of it all – she is seen to be a bitch, with a capital B. 

The public does not take well to women who are not agreeable or meek. And they especially don’t like it when they’re unwilling to accept what everyone tells them they must accept. People often complain that Roan is ungrateful and that her desire for privacy, while also seeking success in her career, is at odds with each other. But why is it seen as so ridiculous to want to do your job and not deal with near-constant harassment?

Because Chappell Roan does not graciously accept the negative aspects of her profession: the self-abnegation, lack of privacy, the pretence of it all – she is seen to be a bitch, with a capital B

Many of us may struggle to have sympathy with the rich and famous, and believe that a bit of privacy invasion is the price they must pay for a lavish lifestyle. But what starts as the occasional intrusion can quickly escalate: look at Princess Diana or Christina Grimmie, whose deaths were directly caused by their fame and the public’s sense of entitlement to their private lives. It seems that we are only ever able to empathise with famous women and take their struggles with celebrity seriously after they’ve passed away. 

A lot of the criticism levelled at Roan is also laced with a certain kind of homophobic misogyny. She’s seen as this mean lesbian woman who supposedly “hates children” because she obviously doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body, and has spoken out before about the “hell” of young motherhood. Through her behaviour and her sexuality, she deviates from our notions of ideal womanhood, and her critics are continuously trying to shame her into submission. But she won’t let them, and that really pisses them off. 

One of my favourite things about Roan is that she is kind, but not nice. Writer Haley Nahman wrote about this exact dichotomy on her Substack, based on an X post she saw that claimed: “East Coasters are kind but not nice, while West Coasters are nice but not kind.” The post stated that: “Niceness is saying ‘I’m so sorry you’re cold,’ while kindness may be ‘Ugh, you’ve said that five times, here’s a sweater!’ Kindness is addressing the need, regardless of tone.” In her essay, she highlights how this dichotomy is present in our institutional politics: “The focus on woke signalling via language and optics (nice) versus material concerns like who has food, shelter, safety, agency (kind). Broadly, this reflects my shorthand for what differentiates liberals from leftists: the former prioritising niceness, the latter kindness.” 

Obviously, I don’t know Roan, but her public actions and persona fit into this dichotomy pretty well. She doesn’t perform politeness for anybody, and doesn’t tolerate the mistreatment she is “supposed” to accept as a celebrity. She isn’t ‘nice’. But she does donate significant amounts of money to support transgender youth and LGBTQ+ communities around the world. Last year, she raised $592,601 in donations through her “Visions of Damsels & Other Dangerous Things” tour. In that same year, she also donated $25,000 to Backline, a US-based mental health and wellness charity that supports those in the music industry and their families, who struggle to afford to eat, live and support themselves. She also did the unpopular thing during the 2024 presidential election by refusing to endorse Kamala Harris for President because of the Biden-Harris administration’s ongoing support for Israel during its genocidal assault on Gaza.