Chappell Roan and the Death of Performative Pop Politics
By: Punk On The Frontline
The Fabricated Upbringing: From Trailer Parks to Tall Tales
Chappell Roan isn’t the queer messiah pop music made her out to be. She’s not some underdog Midwestern lesbian who clawed her way up from trailer parks and repression. She’s not a revolutionary. She’s not a political icon. She’s a carefully curated image; a liberal cosplay of queerness covered in glitter and 80s nostalgia, hiding behind AI filters and family money.
Let’s get something straight: Chappell Roan didn’t grow up in a trailer. She wasn’t low or even middle class. She was born into wealth and conservative power. Her grandfather, Dennis K. Chappell, is a multimillionaire. Her mom’s a veterinarian. Her dad’s a retired Naval reservist and nurse who helped run the family vet business. That’s not scraping by; it’s that’s privilege wrapped in a pink bow. She claims she lived in a trailer park as a kid, but there’s no real evidence of that. And even if she did, she didn’t live within a lower class or middle class lifestyle. She moved into a house in small-town Missouri with a family of professionals. She wasn’t poor. She wasn’t struggling. She wasn’t oppressed. She was just building a backstory to sell a brand.
And yet she built her whole persona on being the “Midwestern popstar” from humble roots. She marketed herself as the queer voice of the working class. She danced around in glitter, called herself “the Midwest Princess,” and convinced her fans she knew what it meant to fight from the bottom. But her bottom was padded with generational wealth and Republican ties. Her rise wasn’t grassroots. It was engineered.
Political Affiliations: Silence in the Face of Oppression
Let’s talk about those ties I mentioned. Roan’s uncle, Darin Chappell, is a Republican state representative in Missouri; a man who openly supports anti-abortion laws, anti-trans legislation, and everything else that keeps queer people marginalized and afraid. Roan? Silent. She’s never condemned him. Never distanced herself. She says she loves her family “unconditionally,” no matter what. That’s not love—that’s complicity.
She has said, “I’m very grateful now looking back that I am from such a conservative Christian background, because I understand the communities there, and I understand where they’re coming from.” Great. But understanding them doesn’t mean you have to coddle them. It doesn’t mean you protect the very people who legislate against our survival. If you understand them so well, you should understand exactly how dangerous they are; and why staying silent isn’t neutrality. It’s betrayal.
She claims she “hates both sides.” That she’s “not political.” That’s a cop-out. That’s privilege talking. If you’re queer, poor, disabled, trans, or a person of color, you can’t “hate both sides” when one side is fighting against your very existence. You don’t get to be apolitical. Because politics decide if you eat. If you get healthcare. If you’re safe. Roan has the luxury of playing the centrist because she’s never had to fight the way we do.
She says she doesn’t have time to be educated on politics because she’s “just a popstar.” That’s bullshit. Queer folks with two jobs, no safety net, and everything to lose still make time to learn. Still make time to fight. Still make time to show up. Being “just a popstar” doesn’t excuse you from responsibility—especially not when you’re profiting off the very culture you refuse to defend.
The AI Art Debacle: Complicity in Creative Exploitation
There is also the AI mess to throw into her long list of controversies. She told fans to make AI art of her and her friends. Let’s be abundantly clear: AI art steals. It rips from real artists without consent or pay. It’s anti-worker, anti-artist, and anti-queer, because it replaces human creativity with soulless algorithms that mimic what they don’t understand. And Roan backed it. She didn’t just use it; she promoted it. That’s not ignorance. That’s selling out.
And even still the AI bullshit Roan encouraged fans to use doesn't just exploit artists; they actively harm the environment. Generative AI models like the ones used to create images of her and her friends require massive amounts of energy to train and operate. We’re talking about millions of pounds of CO2 emissions just to run a single model; equivalent to flying across the country dozens of times. These systems demand constant access to high-powered servers, guzzling electricity often sourced from fossil fuels. So while Roan plays dress-up in glitter and asks fans to make cute AI portraits, the tech she’s promoting is accelerating climate collapse; devastating the same planet queer, disabled, and poor communities are already fighting to survive on. That’s not empowerment. That’s environmental violence.
Denigrating Young Mothers: A Public Display of Ignorance
And let’s not forget her attack on young parents. On Call Her Daddy, she said:
“I actually don’t know anyone who is happy and has children at this age. I have literally not met anyone who is happy, anyone who has light in their eyes, anyone who has slept.”
She even called her peers who are parents “in hell.”
You know who she’s talking about? Working-class moms. Queer parents. People trying to survive, raise kids, and build something real in a world designed to crush them. And she spits on them. She mocks them. Because she thinks choosing love and family over fame and filters is pathetic.
That’s not radical. That’s not funny. That’s classist, privileged bullshit.
Her attack on young parents doesn’t just reek of ignorance; it spits in the face of the very class struggle she claims to have come from. You can’t posture as a poor, working-class girl from Missouri and then turn around and mock the people still living that reality. Young parents, especially working-class moms, don’t have the luxury of chasing pop dreams or living glitter-coated lives. They’re surviving, sacrificing, and doing what they can in a brutal economy. If Roan really came from hardship, she’d understand that. But instead, she chooses to punch down, calling them lifeless and miserable like they’re disposable. Even if she did grow up struggling, her disdain for young, low-income parents shows she learned nothing from it. She’s not just a liar; she’s a good-for-nothing fucking hypocrite who shits on the same class she pretends to represent.
We need to stop confusing visibility with liberation. Just because someone’s queer and on a stage doesn’t mean they’re fighting for us. Chappell Roan doesn’t speak for the queer community. She speaks for her brand, her Spotify numbers, and the system that keeps her safe while the rest of us bleed.
She’s not one of us. She’s a product of the very forces we fight against. And if we let her be our mouthpiece, we let those forces win.
Chappell Roan didn’t fail us. She was never for us to begin with.
Sources
Wikipedia. “Darin Chappell.” en.wikipedia.org
The Times. “No, Chappell Roan, being a mother in my twenties was not miserable.” thetimes.co.uk
The Cut. “A Bunch of Moms Are Mad at Chappell Roan.” thecut.com
Fox News. “Chappell Roan’s journey from ‘trailer park’ to self-proclaimed ‘Midwest Princess’.” foxnews.com