In modern secular society, the closest things we have to gods are celebrities and public figures. However, they are man-made icons. We, the people, constitute the judge, jury, and executioner who decide how long these deified people stay on their pedestals. In line with our patriarchal culture, this hammer often comes down on female celebrities, but what happens when they bring the hammer down on themselves before anyone else has the chance?
Doja Cat has been dominating the music industry in recent years and has been known to playfully troll since the start of her career, but she has taken it to another level lately. Publicly belittling fans and posting a picture of herself in a Nazi shirt on Instagram, to name a few instances, has fans jumping ship. In fact, this behavior has caused her to lose over 300,000 followers on Instagram, which is something she asked her fans to do.
This situation begs the question: are these stunts all calculated moves to promote her new demonically stylized album, Scarlet, or is this the real Doja Cat? Do these shock-value shit-posts reveal her true sense of humor as being devoid of all taste and morals? Has she decided to no longer hold up her facade? Fans have been speculating, and Doja’s erratic behavior hasn’t provided any solid clues. One has to wonder, what if these antics were meant for a different reason, not to promote but to defame?
There’s a long history of starlets reaching world domination only for the public to turn on a dime and start picking apart everything they do, reducing them to infamy or insignificance.
The best example of this is Britney Spears. Despite being America’s sweetheart for years, she was harassed by paparazzi, asked incredibly invasive questions on live television, and fat-shamed by the tabloids in the wake of her breakup with Justin Timberlake. Her ability as a mother and her talent was shoved under a microscope and torn apart. The ordeal culminated in 2007 when Britney Spears fended off paparazzi with an umbrella and was seen later that night shaving her head. Public opinion fully turned against her after this, and she was placed under a conservatorship for thirteen years. Britney was recently freed from the conservatorship, but thirteen years of her life were stolen from her, partially because of how the public branded her.
Similarly, even though she is now the most famous singer since Madonna and is breaking records left and right, Taylor Swift’s career was on shaky ground in 2017 when the entire internet branded her a manipulative snake. She rose from the ashes by playing into the persona while simultaneously defending herself in her album Reputation. She later released a documentary that told her side of the story. Many other women like Jannet Jackson and Amanda Bynes could never fully regain the public’s love and restart their careers. This may have been because their struggles started before public opinion had been influenced by the #MeToo Movement.
In a post girlpower era where people are slightly more forgiving of female celebs’ slip-ups, is Doja trying to remove the possibility of a similar scandal from the equation of her career by acting this way on her own terms?
On the one hand, Doja Cat has been asking fans to unfollow her and leave her alone, expressing a desire to feel normal and a sense of freedom when she lost those thousands. She has spoken out about the difficulty of being famous and wishing her fans would get a life.
She even commented, “I don’t give a f*ck what you think about my personal life. I never have and never will. Goodbye and good riddance, miserable h*es.”
However, she would disappear from the public eye if she wanted privacy. Taylor Swift was able to disappear for an entire year, with not one paparazzi photo. It’s doable. She’s consciously choosing to remain active online and in the media, so perhaps she’s trying to stave off a proper cancellation. If Doja Cat turns around after all of this and goes, “I’m just being silly!’ then all future behavior could be viewed as unserious, making her immune to cancellation, as long as she doesn’t do something genuinely horrid. However, what if she’s already taken the joke too far? Has this already backfired? Or will it be a success?
Some fans feel she is taking the trolling too far to stay relevant; others think it is a whole new persona named Scarlet. Some think she’s gone off the mental deep end because of the mounting pressures of fame.
Regardless of the motivation behind this self-destruction, she will always have fans who are oblivious, indifferent, or amused by her antics. If she scales back the severity of her outbursts and switches back to a mix of pop and rap, all will be forgiven. After all, the internet is a fickle place, and it’s hard to fully condemn someone when you can’t tell what their intentions and motivations genuinely are.
Words by Colette Barnhart.
Graphic by Eve Friday.