​​The Price of Being Human: How Young Women in Music Are Punished for Needing Rest

If you’re sick, you take the day off work. So why have we started punishing pop stars for having to do the same?

Earlier this year, I started having kidney pain in the middle of the workday. Naturally, I called my manager and went home, then took a couple of sick days. This was entirely in line with policy, and my manager was sympathetic. It’s a common, accepted practice in most jobs, and yet, when it comes to public-facing entertainers, performers, particularly young women, being targeted and harassed for doing the same thing has become commonplace.

Why do we feel so comfortable treating young performers like objects for our own enjoyment, unable to let them simply be human?

When Lola Young collapsed onstage in September, the reaction online told its own story. Beneath the polite messages wishing her well, there was an undercurrent of anger: people frustrated at only getting half a show, worrying about future cancellations, and even criticising her for needing a break. Indeed, there is a valid argument around management teams often pushing artists to perform until they, quite literally, drop. But there’s also a deeper, more entrenched societal impulse to punish young women for having health issues they can’t control.

It would be wonderful if we could choose when we got sick, if, for one, we could decide not to have the flu, not to faint, not to feel exhausted. But we don’t live in that fantasy world. We live in the real one, where people do get sick, do collapse, and do need rest. The argument that fans “paid to see a show” so artists should push through anyway is also worth examining. Is it not problematic to assign someone’s worth to the amount of money paid to see them? I get paid by people to do my job too, and yet when I’m sick, I’m allowed to take a day to rest. Increasingly, we’re treating women in entertainment as commodities whose right to be unwell disappears the moment tickets are sold, or tours are announced.

Most of the time, fans receive refunds for cancelled shows. The real loss is often in transport or accommodation, which can be frustrating, of course, but again, why are we so comfortable being angry at someone else for choices we’ve made? We need to start recognising the health and wellbeing of another human being as more valuable than our own inconvenience.

Sociologists describe an individualistic society as one in which people value personal choice, self-sufficiency, and individual desires over those of the community. In this example, we prioritise our own spending and disappointment over someone else’s health. Individualism teaches us to think of ourselves first, even when the moral thing to do would be to show empathy. Individualism also makes it harder to see misogyny for what it is, as in an individualist culture, we tend to view things in isolation. Shaming one female artist, like Chappell Roan, for being sick might seem like a one-off, but when we zoom out, a pattern is cemented: women are criticised far more harshly than men for the same behaviour. Societal issues don’t exist in a vacuum, and one cannot separate the growing epidemic of online hate from the wider culture of misogyny that feeds it.

Part of this also comes down to invisible illness and the ongoing stigma surrounding mental health. When Donald Glover cancelled tour dates to undergo surgery, the response was largely sympathetic, but when Chappell Roan had to cancel due to overwhelming mental health issues, or when Ethel Cain left a show halfway through after an apparent breakdown, the internet reacted erupted in anger.

According to the AMA Journal of Ethics, around a quarter of Americans have a condition classed as a disability, but only a small fraction use something visible, like a wheelchair, that signals this to others. Invisible illnesses, including mental health conditions, are serious, and they affect women disproportionately. It is easier to empathise with what can be seen than  when an illness isn’t visible. This lack of understanding falls hardest on young women, who are most affected by the invisibility of mental health struggles.

When a show is cancelled because someone is unwell, it is natural to feel disappointed. What is not acceptable is allowing that disappointment to turn into hostility. We must learn to process frustration quietly, while extending empathy to those going through something difficult. Recognising performers, particularly young women, as people rather than as providers of a service is the first step towards this shift. And, most importantly, we need to allow young women to be young women. After all, many of us were once young women too.

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WORDS EMILIE GIBBS