Chappell Roan is here, she’s queer and she’s not going anywhere.
My name is Chappell Roan. I’m your favorite artist’s favorite artist. I’m your dream girl’s dream girl.
Chappell Roan
While Ethel Cain will always be my favorite artist, Chappell Roan is approaching that list, and quickly. Part of the reason she is so likeable, especially among the queer community, is because she has a very similar effect on her listeners as Ethel Cain does.
People listen to Ethel Cain to find community, to hear someone and something they relate to. It’s a moving and deeply spiritual experience that singers like Cain and Roan have mastered.
Chappell Roan has created this sense of belonging within her fanbase, bringing the struggles and intricacies of WLW relationships to light in her own perfectly unique way.
If you’re like me and you feel the need to be depressed on your way to and from class, you’ve been blaring “Good Luck, Babe!” nonstop, quite literally narrowly avoiding death every time it comes on.
Shoutout whoever almost hit me outside of the Richter Center! Sorry, I can’t pay attention when Chappell Roan is playing.
Roan released “Good Luck, Babe!” on April 5th, 2024, and it is nothing less than a hit…dare I say, it’s perfect. This song has a very bright, 80’s feel, but it’s lyrics are raw, real and gut-wrenching.
The song touches on the complexity of being in a relationship/situationship with a closeted girl who refuses to accept herself for what she truly is. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Roan says it’s “about wishing good luck to someone who is denying fate.”
One line, while the entire song hits home, particularly stuck out to me.
When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night…
With your head in your hands, you’re nothing more than his wife…
“Good Luck, Babe!” by Chappell Roan
Family, friends, whoever is reading this- buckle up.
I’ve known I was bisexual for as long as I can remember. While it was something I actually admitted to myself and a few friends very recently, I would be lying if I said that even when I was trying to convince myself that I was something I am not, something deep inside me knew the truth.
I was raised in a somewhat conservative Catholic family, and while I love my parents and know I can tell them anything, sexuality was a taboo topic. I have attended Catholic school for literally my entire life, and while my religion teachers grew more accepting of others as time passed, you can imagine what they might have had to say about the “gays.”
I always knew there was something different about me, namely, a lack of commitment to just having crushes on boys. But, especially when I was younger, there was no space for me to talk or learn about it. Instead, I developed a deep disconnect within myself and was conflicted between who people thought I was and who I really am.
I learned to deny myself acceptance of own identity in fear of being treated like the countless other girls at my school who were also queer.
This denial was agonizing. I debated my own identity for years, literally trying to convince myself that I was something I was not for years. I would fight my own internal monologue every night, but, still, a small part of me would hold on to what I knew deep down to be true.
Perhaps a better way to but this denial is as a comparison to one of my very first arguments in elementary school.
I went to a very small Catholic elementary school, so when new kids joined our class, they became the coolest, most interesting person on Earth for the day, or at least during recess. A new girl joined our class when we entered fifth grade after moving from out of state. She was very nice, but one thing I noticed about her almost immediately was her shoulder-length jet black hair.
I had literally never seen such dark hair in my eleven years of living, so I had to discuss the matter with her. When I complimented her black hair, she grew visibly upset, practically yelling at me that it was actually dark brown. It was definitely not dark brown, so, being me, I told her that her hair was certainly black. She started crying and didn’t stop until recess ended and class started up again.
We attended the same high school where she later admitted to having black hair. Oh, the horror.
This eleven-year-old delusion, though, is very similar to my own struggle. Just like my other unchanging MQ characteristics, my sexuality is not something that started or will end, rather it is a part of me.
I always have been bisexual and I always will be bisexual.
Having attended Catholic schools my entire life, even now at St. Bonaventure, coming out at school was not an option. It was practically social suicide or an opportunity to get dirty looks in the hallways or hear “I just don’t want you to, like, have a crush on me or something.”
That, obviously, was not appealing to me. I was also deeply uncomfortable with my sexuality at the time and the thought of people disliking me in high school because of it literally made me nauseous.
As if this internal crisis could not get any worse, contrary to popular belief, it turns out you’re not taught whether or not God still loves you if you also love women in Christology class. Who would’ve thought?
Like I said, I have come to embrace and, more importantly, accept my sexuality very recently. Good ol’ Catholic guilt is a b*tch.
While I was actually saying out loud and accepting it internally months before this class, it was my Catholic Theology class that really made me accept that I could love who I wanted to without sacrificing God’s love.
The very first book we read, “The Love That Is God,” by Frederick Bauerschmidt basically spends an entire chapter explaining the God is love and if He didn’t love us, we would cease to exist.
I took that as, “Hey, I’m still here, so God still loves me!”
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1 John 4:7
But, back to Chappell Roan.
This lyric specifically touches on the very “fate” Chappell Roan is talking about. It describes the woman Roan was in a relationship with as she wakes up from her sleep years after their “sexually explicit kind of love affair” to find that her self denial has brought her into a marriage in which she is nothing but her husbands wife.
This line killed me when I first heard it, but also brought me joy in the fact that the woman Chappell Roan is singing about is no longer me.
I will no longer force myself to be something I am not. I refuse to wake up after years of self-denial in a relationship with someone who doesn’t know or love me for exactly who I am.
Despite the dramatics of coming out, perhaps the most important part of what I’m trying to say is that who I am attracted to is quite literally the least interesting thing about me. I promise!
I am still the little girl (and adult) who cannot be silent for more than six minutes (this was recently tested). I still laugh harder telling the joke than at the joke, which makes everyone laugh because I’m still the girl who has a hilarious laugh. I still talk too loud. I’m still brutally honest, sometimes too much so. I still love to read. I still love a dance party in my room. I am still a heinous procrastinator. I am still obsessed with my dogs and I still love my family…I never stopped. I am still the little girl in the tulips. I am still the girl I was before you read this article.
I’m still her.