Read time: Approximately 17 minutes

If you’ve ever been invited to a dinner party at a friend’s house, I know you brought a bottle of wine. Why would I know that? You’ve never told me about your friends and why should I know anything about your purchases? It’s because bringing a gift for a host is a social construct, which is an activity or behavior (or complex combination of these) we’ve all collectively decided is the way it should be.

Often, social constructs are much bigger than we are. In addition to many of us walking in lock step to reinforce them, contextual power dynamics limit our ability to withstand them. Before the dinner party, you consider the invitation your friend has extended and the other people who will be at the party. You buy a nice wine, so you can make a good impression and elevate your status currency at the party. “Isn’t this bottle of wine gorgeous?” the host may say as she shows it to other guests, helping to enhance your perceived power among the attendees. 

In the landmark book Gender Trouble, philosopher Judith Butler examines the idea of social constructs through the lens of gender and the repetitive circles we walk through them, calling such acts “performativity.” I am also reminded of Michel Foucault’s point of view on how power is everywhere — something we can harness as we embody it in everyday life — and his illuminating work on self-discipline, specifically in his writing about the panopticon (a prison cell where inmates are surveilled 24 hours a day and behave accordingly).

I tell you all this because Chappell Roan has imbued interrogating performativity and embodying power throughout her highly addictive pop music that nearly everyone I know finds irresistible, no matter who they are or who they love. Her deft skill in identifying the markers and patterns we make in promoting social constructs may serve as a framework of her oeuvre, noted most expansively on her debut studio album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. I’m in complete awe of Roan’s intellect as well as the questions she forces her eager audiences to reflect on, such as: Is this the way it has to be?

For Roan, it decidedly does not and she shows us how we can be free. To guide you through what she’s doing, I explore how she taps into our shared collective unconscious with universal experiences that mark the constructs we slow walk into; the trouble with a mismatch in performativity; and finally what relinquishing the shackles of performativity to take back power and fully embody it could look like once and for all. 

The Circles We Travel

Just as I related to you the dinner party universal truth, Roan picks up on the key markers that support the propagation of gender roles and power dynamics in her work. 

“Coffee,” the fourth track from Rise, is the most prominent example of her exploration of social constructs and the implicit economy of romantic relationships. We may believe the way relationships happen is fixed, and they may be experienced like an economy, where one partner offers something (e.g., the perception of security) that the other may value, which may shape the other partner’s behavior (and potentially cause them to self-discipline) in order to secure what they want. The conceit of Roan’s song is that meeting an ex-lover for “coffee” defuses the potential for relapsing into the circles drawn around a relationship and may potentially interrupt the previously experienced glide path of the relationship where power may not have been evenly distributed among partners. Here Roan taps into the social construct of what “meeting for coffee” means in American society to bring in her audience and enable them to reflect from a point of common understanding. Coffee is often consumed in the morning or, at a minimum, during the day; in a public setting; and used as a way for two power/status neutral parties, whether they’re friends or coworkers, to have an informal conversation.

From the very first verse, she cites other meeting places that are less preferred and may serve as meaningful markers for her audience to identify with: “the Italian place / it’s where I met your family, some words were exchanged” and then “the jazz bar on Mary Ann Street, but / you’d buy me a drink and we know where that leads.” Although the premise of the song is an intimate conversation between two ex-lovers – one who is grappling with how to interact with this person and untangle themselves from the perceived power differential in the former relationship in which she felt nothing at all – the social constructs Roan chooses are universally understood so that the listener feels seen, even as an outsider to the dialogue they’re witnessing. For example, a man buying a woman a drink is a conventionally expected activity and may confer an economy of power such as, If he buys me this drink, I must provide something in return. 

In the chorus, she explicitly underscores the neutralizing effect of the idea of “coffee”: “I’ll meet you for coffee, ‘cause if we have wine / you’ll say that you want me, I know that’s a lie / If I didn’t love you, it would be fine.” “Wine” (paired with continuing to love the ex) may result in certain acts within the economy of their relationship, and perceived power differential. If the lover says they love and want me, I must be intimate, and therefore vulnerable, with them. She ends the first turn of the chorus with, “Nowhere else is safe, every place leads back to your place,” given the resulting acts other meeting places may facilitate. 

For Roan, coffee and wine are not beverages but rather social constructs that prescribe certain outcomes based on the power economy established by the circles the lovers walked through them. In using these constructs, she’s able to invite the listener in to a situation that may feel relatable given the widely understood difference between a coffee date and a date at a bar, while also raising their awareness of having a degree of intentionality in acts related to them. The listener may think, Been there, done that while also being open to Roan’s suggestion that you can harness power back by not meeting at all (as she decides by the end of the song), or creating a new path and therefore pattern associated with these meeting settings.

She continues her exploration of social constructs on “Casual,” which is, smartly, the next track of the album, demonstrating Roan’s keen awareness of how to build an argument over the course of her work. Instead of using physical items that lend themselves to specific dynamics, she focuses on key actions that have significant symbolic meaning tied to them, which picks up on Butler’s idea of performativity that reinforces patterns and becomes discursive in determining one’s identity (and resulting power). 

The song relates a situationship, as kids these days say, where there may be a mismatch of interpreting social constructs, a topic I’ll expand on in the next section. From the first line of the song, Roan establishes the confusion around the social construct she’s operating within, as reflected by her friends who may not immediately understand the complex power economy of her relationship, engaging in a form of surveillance we find acceptable: “My friends call me a loser / ‘cause I’m still hanging around.” Although the protagonist’s lover is non-committal, she remains attached to him because she perceives the status of the relationship to be called one social construct (a casual relationship) but experienced as something else (a more serious partnership), and finds frustration in the vast discrepancy between the two. 

In the chorus, Roan uses poignant markers that confer the meaning of one type of relationship over another to point out the frustrating mismatch between the state of their relationship and their actions. “Two weeks and your mom invites me to her house in Long Beach / is it casual now?” The lover’s attitude screams, I don’t want a relationship, yet he introduces her to his family, which is widely considered to be an advanced-stage relationship endeavor in today’s society. Thus she asks: What exactly is this? Roan illuminates these universal experiences and questions to bring in her audience to her exploration and interrogation of why we continuously reinforce the boundaries of social constructs in certain relationships. 

In the bridge, she goes on to cite additional markers offering clues to social constructs that may be widely understood by her audience as the root of her confusion (and perhaps rage). She sings:

It’s hard being casual

When my favorite bra lives in your dresser

And it’s hard being casual

When I’m on the phone talking down your sister

And I try to be the chill girl that

Holds her tongue and gives you space

I try to be the chill girl but

Honestly, I’m not

These can be understood with little explanation: clothes at a lover’s apartment signify permanence, counseling the lover’s family member is typically done by a dedicated partner, one who is usually embedded in the lover’s family. My favorite part of this bridge is when she admits, “I try to be a chill girl but / honestly, I’m not.” The protagonist understands the premise of their “casual” relationship is that she should be cool, calm, detached, unbothered by him talking about their sexual exploits to his friends – acts of self-discipline in the face of the economy of their relationship and perceived distribution of power – so that she may retain the relationship (even if it’s casual with potential little upside for her). While the song may come across as a relatable story, it is actually a deep analysis and interrogation on why such performativity should exist in the first place. Given Roan’s sensibility to connect “Coffee” to “Casual” (and also to begin the record on “Femininomenon”), it’s evident that her intent is to plant a question in her listeners’ minds: Are these circles we travel serving us well?

Mismatched Constructs

Picking up on the construct confusion seen in “Casual,” Roan digs into this topic in several other songs. 

In “Good Luck, Babe!” Roan explores a relationship with a person who signals attraction yet cannot commit, potentially due to a perceived risk (such as loss in status and thus power) in embracing same-sex attraction. 

The protagonist’s lover wants her yet “[says] that we are nothing, but you know the truth.” For the protagonist, this is confusing: Here is a person who wants the protagonist to call her “baby” — tapping into our conventional understanding of the type of relationship in which that affectionate name makes sense — yet runs away. 

Where Roan may have had some compassion and patience on songs from her debut album, she’s pointed about the lover’s pursuit of heteronormative performativity. In the chorus, she sings:

You can kiss a hundred boys in bars

Shoot another shot, try to stop the feeling

You can say it’s just the way you are

Make a new excuse, another stupid reason

Good luck, babe (well, good luck), well, good luck, babe (well, good luck)

You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling

TL;DR: You can act like you like men and travel such circles, but you’re attracted to women. Own it or get out of my way.

Roan becomes even more incisive about the lover’s perils in clinging to heteronormative performativity in the bridge, highlighting the likely outcomes of her decision (i.e., a life the lover will dislike and realize she was wrong to pursue):

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

And when you think about me, all of those years ago

You’re standing face to face with “I told you so”

You know I hate to say, “I told you so”

You know I hate to say, but, I told you so

The fact that “Good Luck, Babe!” – unconnected to an actual album and exclusively a single – became the song of summer 2024 speaks to the effectiveness of her critique and how she goes about doing it, tapping into collectively understood social constructs to turn them on their head and resonate with her audience. 

Before she released “Good Luck, Babe!” she gave us “Femininomenon,” which covers similar ground, albeit in a less severe manner. In my view, the song — positioned as the opening track to her debut album — establishes the theoretical framework she uses throughout her oeuvre. 

In this song, Roan frames the tale she’ll tell as “same old story, time again,” which immediately invites the listener into an experience that will be universally recognized, building on existing social constructs: the protagonist pursues an unavailable man and played the role of the cool, unassuming lover, sending “him pictures and playlists and phone sex” so he’d think she was “chill” – markers of self-discipline to retain a semblance of power. Understanding the power imbalance and what’s at stake for her, the female partner may try to make subtle, one-dimensional overtures — like photos and playlists — designed to pique the male partner’s interest while simultaneously removing emotional need from the transaction, to lower the price of admission so she may get what she wants (such as perceived security). As we see in Roan’s song, once the female partner communicates a level of limited intimacy — suggesting “coffee” (highlighting another favorite marker of hers) — he ghosts her, demonstrating the precarity in the economy of their relationship and the female partner’s perception that low-touch outreach – vs. more direct communication of emotions and needs (as we’ll later cover in “Red Wine Supernova”) – may be all that can be tolerated to work within the confines of their relationship economy. Throughout the song, Roan intersperses the idea of a “feminomenon” – a radical departure from social constructs and the circles we travel – which may be the ideal path forward. 

I find the second verse of this song to be particularly interesting and effective. Fast forward, and the uninterested male partner marries the female. In Roan’s and our world of social constructs, this may represent that the woman has finally gained currency value since she “got what [she] wanted,” conferring status and power, as well as recognition of the surveillance by her peers. Yet for the female partner, the perception of power may be hollow and associated acts may be forms of self-discipline to conform with expected social constructs, shown in examples like: “you pretend to love his mother” and “lying to your friends about / how he’s such a goddamn good lover.” I’m reminded of Miranda July’s off-the-wall, hilarious, and best-selling book All Fours in this verse, specifically when Roan sings, “Stuck in the suburbs, you’re folding his laundry / got what you wanted, so stop feeling sorry.” There’s so much tension between traveling well-worn circles of the accepted social construct to retain power and doing what serves you well.

Like Roan, July recognizes that traveling these circles may have diminishing returns. July draws the reader in by taking the logical outcome of following social constructs to the most extreme degree, highlighted in examples such as the novel’s protagonist spending large sums of money to design a hotel room she’ll use for a few weeks as she escapes her own reality. As in July’s book, Roan is flashing a warning sign in this song, which became a blinking, neon siren in “Good Luck, Babe!” 

On “Femininomenon,” she ends on a hopeful note, rallying her audience to break from the strictures of social constructs and harness their own power, as I’ll cover next. 

Breaking Free

While Roan spends time establishing the peril of performativity in service of social constructs, she gives equal attention to what the ideal could be.

Since we’ve covered so many songs about relationships already, let’s start there. She describes herself as a “super graphic ultra modern girl” — and says this is what she’s looking for in a partner in the song by the same name. I believe “Red Wine Supernova” (among the greatest songs I’ve ever heard) may offer a window into what that relationship looks like. The song’s protagonist falls in love with another woman and the best word to describe the experience is frictionless – free of surveillance (or caring about surveillance if it exists) and regard for constructs.

Unlike the songs elsewhere covered in this post, the song focuses keenly on the body, including from the very first line: “She was a playboy, Brigit Bardotte.” In the second verse, Roan describes the protagonist (likely her own first-person account throughout the song) as wearing a “mini skirt and my go-go boots.” In the third verse, she recounts what’s so appealing about the lover, using body-level descriptions: “I like (I like) what you like (you like) / Long hair (no bra) that’s my type (that’s right).” These physical markers serve two purposes aligning to Roan’s broader theoretical framework. First, both lovers may possess what may be stereotypically feminine features and aesthetics, which, in the context of an evidently same-sex relationship, is meant to disrupt the social construct of what such relationships look like (i.e., not butch/femme, and this isn’t a heterosexual relationship where beauty is prized either). Second, such descriptions of physical traits (and the associated effects are understood by the listener) reinforces that this is literally what embodying power looks like. (As a side note, in the music video for this song, Roan augments how much she’s breaking the mold by having a gawking elderly neighbor peer insidiously into the bedroom of the two female lovers, who are aware of such surveillance and reduce the hectoring woman to a large rabbit – that Roan affectionately pets – at the end of the video.)

In contrast to the social construct and performativity confusion seen in her other songs, as outlined above, the relationship covered in “Red Wine Supernova” is the ultimate liberated experience of love and attraction. In the chorus, Roan sings, “Baby, why don’t you come over? / Red wine supernova, falling into me,” demonstrating the unbridled experience of connection between the two lovers. Instead of dancing around an opportunity to forge intimacy, such as through coffee, the protagonist outright invites the lover over, in explicit terms. The specific use of “falling” may speak to the unmitigated experience of romantic love without the shackles of social constructs, power inequities, and self-discipline that may otherwise interfere in other types of relationships, as noted throughout her other songs.

“Red Wine Supernova” is undoubtedly an earworm, which further heightens Roan’s success with helping her listeners see a path forward that may almost feel unnatural when it comes to romantic relationships. She applies the focus of creating power for herself through turning the tables on performativity in “Pink Pony Club,” which may be among her most popular songs as well as among her most personal.

In “Pink Pony Club,” she takes us along her transformative journey from recognizing social constructs (likely represented by Tennessee) through finding her own path forward (represented by Los Angeles, specifically the Pink Pony Club). In just a few minutes, the song swiftly covers the tension she herself has experienced in disrupting performativity in service of social constructs and therefore power, by dropping in lines like: 

Won’t make my mama proud, it’s gonna cause a scene

She sees her baby girl, I know she’s gonna scream

God, what have you done?

For Roan, there is a risk in going to the Pink Pony Club “where boys and girls can all be queens every single day”: exchanging the currency and conferred power that comes from family and potentially societal approval for personal freedom. In the chorus, she speaks directly to her mom (a specter throughout the song) and cites her clothes, alluding to body-level traits once again as she did in “Red Wine Supernova,” to articulate the power in freedom she has in forging her own path:

Oh mama, I’m just having fun

On the stage in my heels

It’s where I belong down at the

Pink Pony Club

I’m gonna keep on dancing at the

Pink Pony Club

While on its face “Pink Pony Club” may come across as an LGTBQ+ anthem, I see it more as a declaration of moving beyond social constructs and performativity, and having fun while doing it. 

Although I’ve cited a few philosophers in this post, it is actually Chappell Roan who has come through with the pragmatic guidance that can enable all of us to be free. In your basement dance party, as you’re shouting “Call me hot, not pretty,” think of it as more than a line from “HOT TO GO!” and rather a compact directive to move through the world with awareness of the social constructs you may be otherwise sleepwalking that may be – ironically – limiting the power you have in the world. As Foucault suggests, power is everywhere, and Roan shows us how to embody it in our favor.