Chappell Roan can take a stand, we apparently just need her to suffer a bit first.

"You shut the f**k up." With five words, Chappell Roan cemented her status as the young pop star with uncompromising boundaries.

The 26-year-old singer was posing on the red carpet at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards this week when she turned, pointed, and yelled those words at a photographer. 

Now let's be clear: he had been the one to say them first. Maybe his words weren't directed at Chappell, maybe they were, but either way she felt the force of what he yelled and simply repeated it.

"For someone who gets a lot of anxiety around people yelling at you, the carpet is horrifying, and I yelled back,"  Chappell explained to Entertainment Tonight later that evening. "You don't get to yell at me like that."

She's not the first star to hit back at screaming voices behind flashing cameras. But her words at the VMAs quickly went viral. 

Though much of her Gen Z fan base praised her for refusing to just stand there and brush it off, another incredibly loud group of people have different opinions. There were angry radio shock jocks –  looking at you, Kyle Sandilands – think pieces on Fox News, hateful comments on social media. You get it. You can probably tell who was mad, and why.

Chappell Roan is the rising star of the entertainment industry. She's young. A few months ago she was relatively unknown, now here she is with the world at her feet. 

She's ungrateful. She's lucky to be here. She's rude. This is what she signed up for. What else did she expect? If she can't handle fame, she shouldn't be a musician.

We've heard the same sentiments shared over the past few weeks, ever since Chappell hit back at the internet over stalking and harassment from fans. These "fans" know where her parents live. Where her sister works. They have pushed the boundaries of their fandom and she isn't willing to accept it. 

"My career is just kind of going really fast, and it's really hard to keep up. I'm just being honest… I'm having a hard time today," she said while addressing "toxic" behaviour.

And somehow that video was divisive.

As one Twitter user Ali Silvi put it, "Chappell Roan is entering the industry with a sense of self worth that everyone applauds in other women as long as they endure mistreatment for a decade before."

Chappell Roan at the 2024 MTV VMAs. Image: Getty.

On Taylor Swift's record-breaking albums Folklore, Evermore, Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department, she has multiple songs about how her own fame is basically a prison that detrimentally impacts her mental health.

She directly called out parasocial fans on the new song But Daddy I Love Him, singing "I'll tell you something right now, I'd rather burn my whole life down, than listen to one more second of bitching and moaning. I'll tell you something about my good name, it's mine alone to disgrace."

The song was widely praised by Swifties, who celebrated her for finally putting down a firm boundary against "toxic" fans.

In 2020, Lady Gaga told CBS reporter Lee Cowan of her early days of fame, "I hated being famous. I hated being a star. I felt exhausted and used up."

She told People Magazine she "used to wake up in the morning, and I would realize I was 'Lady Gaga.' And then I became very depressed and sad, and I didn't want to be myself. I felt threatened by the things my career brought into my life and the pace of my life."

The pace of her life? Sounds a lot like what Chappell had to say. Only she's saying it now, while it's actively happening to her, rather than 10 years later.

While Selena Gomez is closer in age to Chappell, she's been famous almost all her life. She says her fame makes it impossible to "do anything" without causing a reaction.

"The sad part is that I don't remember a time when that wasn't the case. What has kept me afloat is that I know eventually it'll be someone else — and I don't mean that in a negative way," she told Interview Magazine.

And she was right, there is always someone new for the internet to focus their attention on. Right now, it's Chappell Roan.

But in the eyes of the internet these women have somewhat earned their stripes. They've had long careers, they've put in the work, they deserve boundaries. 

Chappell Roan set a boundary in the workplace. So what? People are acting like she chased that photographer down and hit him with the sword she was carrying as part of her medieval red carpet look.

If a man came into my workplace and screamed at me, would you expect me to just be like 'okay, that was fun! Let's do it again some time.'

It's a conversation we've all just had about Jenna Ortega and Winona Ryder at the Venice Film Festival. In Ortega's instance, she was praised for sticking up for her co-worker when photographers were yelling for Ryder to remove her sunglasses.

"No, you don't have to do that," Ortega was seen telling Ryder, with a firm shake of her head.

In a later interview, Ryder called the moment "amazing."

Their co-star Catherine O'Hara added, "That's lovely. And sounds so simple, doesn't it?"

Yes, it does. But it also highlighted the changing ways of Hollywood for Gen Z women.

Catherine O'Hara and Winona Ryder keep their sunglasses on in Venice, thanks to Jenna Ortega. Image: Getty.

Rachel Zegler, star of West Side Story and The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, also yelled at photographers this year.

Unlike Ortega, her moment wasn't viewed as a 'powerful' Gen Z win. It was 'divisive' and 'rude' because she directly confronted the men yelling at her, like Chappell.

Zegler was arriving at a New York Fashion Week show in February, when paparazzi started yelling at her to pose in their direction.

She was actually posing for a different photographer at the time, when anoter yelled at her "don't be silly like that."

Mid-photo, she turned around and told them, "I'm a human, talk to me as such."

@etalkctv

Rachel is only human and she wants to be “treated as such.” ❤️ Rachel Zegler called out a photographer outside the Michael Kors runway show at NYFW for being too aggressive with her. 👏 (🎥: TT/@New York Mickey ) #RachelZegler #NYFW #Paparazzi #FashionWeek #NewYorkCity #NYC #MichaelKors #NYFW24

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These young women are not just randomly going about their days accosting men on the street. They are at work, these men are at work, let's have a little decorum.

Likewise, when an artist releases music, tour dates, merch, social media content, makes red carpet appearances; that is them doing their job. That is what they 'owe' you for your dedication as a fan. They don't also owe you the intimate details of their personal lives and unlimited access to them.

They don't have to put up with stalking, harassment, screaming, and chaos everywhere they go.

So if you're currently shaking your head at Chappell Roan's 'antics' at the VMAs I ask you, how much would you like Chappell Roan to take? What would be enough, for you, for her boundaries to be warranted?

Feature Image: Getty.