'I'm one of you!' Chappell Roan dedicates VMA win to LGBTQ fans
Chappell Roan urged her LGBQT+ fans to not "let anyone tell you that you can’t be exactly who you wanna be" in her VMA acceptance speech.
Chappell Roan dedicated her MTV Video Music Awards win to her LGBTQ+ fans as she opened up on being "one of them".
The 26-year-old singer captured her first ever moonman statue for best new artist at the ceremony in New York on Wednesday (11.09.24) and she took out her diary on stage to read something she had prepared.
She said: "Can you believe it? We’re at the VMAs! I’m gonna read from — I wrote a speech — from my diary.
"Thank you, MTV and Island Records and my team and my family and friends.
"I dedicate this to all the drag artists who inspire me, who inspire me, and I dedicate this to queer and trans people that fuel pop, to the gays who dedicate my songs to someone they love or hate.
"And thank you to the people who are fans, who listen to me, who hear me when I share my joy and my fears.
"Thank you for listening. And for all the queer kids in the Midwest watching right now, I see you, I understand you, because I’m one of you, and don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t be exactly who you wanna be, b****.”
The 'Good Luck, Babe!' hitmaker - whose real name is Kayleigh Rose Amstutz - has previously described her stage name as her drag persona, and has said she identifies as lesbian.
She was raised in a household with traditional Christian values and still feels "uncomfortable" about her sexuality sometimes, but admitted that it took her mother and father "a lot of unlearning" when she came out to them.
She told Rolling Stone: "It took a lot of unlearning, and there’s still things I’m still confused about, and [it’s] why I feel so uncomfortable being gay sometimes.
"I don’t get why this is such an issue for me. It shouldn’t be, but something’s just going on and I need to just accept that."
She also noted she was "scared of flamboyantly gay people" because of her religious upbringing, and while she has spent a long time trying to get away from that mindset, she still has moments of confusion.
She explained: "It took a lot of unlearning, and there’s still things I’m still confused about, and [it’s] why I feel so uncomfortable being gay sometimes.
"I don’t get why this is such an issue for me. It shouldn’t be, but something’s just going on and I need to just accept that."
