Be the Chappell Roan of Your Own Life

Greetings, Meteor readers,

Inexplicably, we are in the final week of August, and on my drive this morning, I saw children in school uniforms making their way up the street. Why does it feel like autumn is creeping up on me like the villain in an M. Night Shyamalan film?

In today’s newsletter, we’re sipping some coffee and reflecting on Chappell Roan’s reminder about workplace boundaries. Plus frightening updates out of Afghanistan, and how anti-trans legislators are also killing period poverty bills.

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Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

Boundaries: Last week, Chappell Roan hit the internet like rompompapom with a simple request: “Please stop touching me. Please stop being weird to my family and friends.” The ask was part of a longer statement Roan released on Instagram laying out her personal boundaries, making it very clear that when she’s not at work, she is fully clocked out and doesn’t want to be harassed by “superfans” or touched in public.

“There is a part of myself that is just for me, and I don’t want that taken away from me.”

And as is the case when a woman in public dares to establish a boundary, it was not well received by some. Disgruntled fans posted response videos online (Roan wisely turned off commenting on the original post) and wrote things like, “We made you” and “It’s the cost of being famous.”

THE FACE OF A WOMAN WHO WILL NOT BE BOTHERED. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

But Roan hits on the larger, darker problem behind the abusive “superfan” behavior that we’ve come to accept as a part of the fame package. There are numerous documentaries about famous people who were sexualized, stalked, harassed, and in some cases attacked by people who professed to be true fans and as we collectively look at those stories in hindsight, it’s easy to say, wow someone should have done something back then. What Roan is telling us in her post is that this is the “back then” moment where something can be done so that a decade from now, we’re not watching the documentary that explains how her career ruined her life.

Her pushback against always-on expectations also reflects a social shift that even those of us without fans are feeling. A new report found that workers between the ages of 25-34 are taking 29 percent more sick days than their older colleagues. “People are missing work because they’re overwhelmed or burned out, or they just need a day to reset,” researchers found. And when they are at work, more and more people are taking their cut-off times seriously. Just yesterday in Australia a law went into effect designed to protect employees who “refuse to monitor, read or respond to contact or attempted contact outside their working hours.”

Unsurprisingly, no such law exists in the U.S. (although an attempt is being made in San Francisco), which explains why even after a global pandemic changed the way we look at work, we’re still trying to figure out how to look at boundaries.

So let this be your friendly reminder that you can be the Chappell Roan of your own life and tell your boss that super graphic ultra modern girls need to be fully clocked out after hours.

AND:

• As The 19th reports this week, getting period products into school bathrooms has for several years felt like that rare bipartisan issue everyone can agree on. But then “anti-trans backlash” started creeping in, and an unlikely target has become “period poverty bills,” which ensured menstrual products in all bathrooms. Suddenly, having a tampon dispenser in a boys’ bathroom is just a bridge too far for some members of the GOP.

• Earlier this month, the body of a medical student was found in a hospital in Kolkata, India. She had been brutally raped and murdered, and the discovery set off days of protests over women’s safety. One revelation has been the alleged failure to keep women safe in the medical field as a whole, including a lack of safe resting quarters for those on double or overnight shifts.

• The Taliban have enacted a set of “vice and virtue” laws, which include barring women from speaking aloud while in public, or even speaking at higher volumes within their own homes. The president of the Afghan Lawyers Association said the new document “not only violates Afghanistan’s domestic laws but also broadly contravenes all 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

• A heartwarming sports moment for you: tennis legend Billie Jean King rallied a few balls outside the US Open with tennis phenom Coco Gauff as part of a celebration of Gauff being featured on a limited edition Wheaties box. Gauff is the fourth Black woman tennis player to be honored as a Wheaties Champion and follows in the footsteps of Althea Gibson, Serena Williams, and Jacquline Joyner Kersee—talk about rarified air!

SCREENSHOT VIA GENERAL MILLS

• In breaking news, Trump has just been indicted on four felony charges for his attempts to disavow the 2020 election results. According to Politico, the 36-page document is an effort to rejigger the case in light of the Supreme Court decision in Trump v. United States, which states that presidents have immunity from prosecution when in office.

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