If someone had informed me a year earlier that a 26-year-old vocalist would assist me in redefining my sense of self as a middle-aged mother, I would have hurled my neck cream at them. It all transpired unexpectedly. One morning, the children were at school, and I was seated at my laptop, relishing the tranquility of my home. Amid my usual singer-songwriters who amplified my mild depression from nearly a decade of parenting, Chappell Roan emerged. Before encountering her, “touch me, baby” was far from my vocabulary—I was overwhelmed by contact. I preferred solitude. However, once Roan appeared on Spotify, she sang those words with the voice of a seasoned, soulful old songbird, compelling me to sing along.
My existence at 43, with two young ones, is starkly dissimilar to my 20s. Query any mother whether she remains the same person she was fresh out of college, and she’ll likely pause to nostalgically recall the liberty and excitement of those times. A friend of mine, who recently welcomed her third child, remarked, “Entering a Toyota Sienna feels like stepping into a trendy nightclub.” In essence, our interests have shifted from bar encounters to weighted blankets and seltzer. Yet, as I eagerly devoured Roan’s initial album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, I realized that beneath the additional girth around my middle, the spider veins, the stiffened hip, the sheer fatigue, the hormonal oscillations, the part of me from my 20s remained intact. Even more surprising was Roan’s capacity to mirror my present reality, enabling me to recognize that these two distinct versions of me could coexist.
When I inquired of Maggie Downs, aged 48 and mother to a 10-year-old, why she is so fond of Roan, she mentioned the juggling act all mothers face—caring for others while also striving to nurture our own selves and recall our identities. “Chappell’s music/personae propose that multiple roles can exist simultaneously. This needn’t be a balancing act at all; we encompass multitudes,” states Downs. Just as Roan sings about stretching herself across four states, from small-town Missouri to Los Angeles, in her track “California,” mothers stretch themselves across their households—one hand tending hair, one hand at a laptop advancing her career, one foot nudging dirty laundry closer to the hamper, the other foot wiping away a booger-like residue from a child’s slime kit on the floor. Emerging from the fatigue of childrearing (and carrying the mental burden for our partners) is a fervent yearning for empowerment. As the ascending strings at the onset of “Femininomenon” yield to a sound akin to our collective heartbeat, Roan questions if we know our desires and needs. Does it occur? “No!” echoes a chorus of female voices. The beat then drops, the cowbells sound, we cease folding the laundry, and we dance out our frustrations.
In some way, Roan has already absorbed the insights most of us don’t gain until our 40s or 50s. When she declined to create a video for “Good Luck, Babe” owing to touring exhaustion, weary perimenopausal and menopausal mothers everywhere rejoiced in the act of saying no. Furthermore, her social media appeal for fans to respect her privacy in public, which angered those who believe the loss of autonomy and privacy is part of her celebrity role. Moms face similar expectations, though instead of icons, we are seen as martyrs: Our bodies, our time, and our energy are for our families. We chose motherhood, hence, we have no validity in complaining about feeling overwhelmed by contact or requiring more solitude.