Venus & the Myth of Value (or: Why Chappell Roan Doesn’t Owe You Shit)
Where does value come from? How do we truly know what something is worth? What causes the value of something to change? Can value be assigned to anything, including a human life?
These are all Venusian questions.
Venus, commonly reduced in pop astrology to the embodiment of beauty, connection, and pleasure, also reveals the inherent volatility and subjectivity of worth through her history of representing various goddesses of war and justice. In both mythological and modern contexts, Venus disrupts the capitalist notion of “stable value” by highlighting how what we cherish is as easily discarded as it is celebrated—and we can see this clearly in the treatment of celebrities in our current epoch, particularly women. The capitalist myth of value—a belief that the worth of any thing can be measured and quantified based on a number of known factors—collapses under Venus’ influence, where value is shown to be fluid, relational, and subject to the whims of desire and discord.
Understanding the Polarity: Socially Constructed Value vs. Fixed Capitalist Value
Fixed capitalist value emphasizes the idea that everything can be commodified—bought and sold—but in order to commodify something, it needs to have a value (price) attached to it. This results in the myth that the value of all things is quantifiable and can be measured, standardized, and expressed numerically. Capitalism seeks to create a sense of stability and predict the future by assigning fixed value metrics that suggest worth is inherent and enduring, reinforcing the notion that markets can objectively determine value, instead of relationships or social perceptions or historical context. This type of value is often constructed by those who hold social, economic, or cultural power—and it does spill over into the way value is placed on individual human lives.
“What is an economy? You might say it is how people who cannot predict the future deal with it.”
Derek Thompson
Socially constructed value, on the other hand, refers to the idea that the worth or importance of something—whether it be money, goods, people, or ideas—is not inherently fixed or objective but is created, maintained, and modified by collective social agreements, perceptions, and cultural norms. This value is determined by shared beliefs, historical context, and societal needs rather than any intrinsic and measurable quality of the object or person being valued. In this sense, socially constructed value is also incredibly dependent upon the epoch it occurs within: what is considered valuable within a society or culture can shift (sometimes drastically) over time.
These two types of value systems are not a binary, but rather a polarity: each one contains a bit of the other, and they rely upon each other to tell the full story of value. Socially constructed value can be altered by the influence of fixed capitalist value, which can make certain commodities increase in social value by assigning them a high fixed value (price) and slapping a “luxury” label on. “Luxury” is a story, and we respond to that story through our own context-based value systems. The inverse of this is the way trends work: the socially constructed value of something increases based on a shared experience or some other type of cultural context, and then capitalism responds by either commodifying it for the first time, or simply assigning it a new (higher) monetary value.
The Evolution of Venus
The transformation of the goddess from Ishtar to Astarte to Aphrodite—all ultimately represented by the planet Venus—illustrates the dynamic and even volatile nature of value and desire. For instance, Ishtar’s dual roles as a goddess of love and war emphasize how value and power are socially negotiated: whether propitiating Ishtar resulted in conflict or restoration of order often depended on who was in power at the time. Her transformation into Astarte in the Levant brought forth attributes that aligned with the local needs for a goddess of fertility and warfare, again reshaping her value to fit new social desires. Finally, as Aphrodite in the Mediterranean world, Venus became the epitome of beauty and seduction, further altering her value to reflect the society’s evolving ideals.1
Venus is not just a symbol of beauty; she is a reflection of societal values. In mythology, Venus’ capacity to stir conflict (e.g., the Judgment of Paris) demonstrates that what is deemed valuable is often what generates the most desire, even if it leads to discord.
The Rise and Fall of Celebrities: A Venusian Cycle
The specific way we elevate celebrities and then discard them is a contemporary expression of Venusian dynamics being co-opted by capitalism. Just as Venus can incite both admiration and conflict, celebrity culture thrives on desire but is also quick to pivot into disillusionment or disdain, illustrating the fragile nature of socially constructed value when it collides with consumerism.
Remember, capitalism has no meaning of its own, and its only purpose is to self-perpetuate. Neptune has been in Pisces, the sign of Venus’ exaltation, since 2011, and in that time there’s been a huge ramping-up of this deify/discard cycle with regard to the rich and famous. As someone rises in popularity, as Chappell Roan has done this year at neck breaking speed, there is a rush of admiration and desire. A person, who was formerly just a person, undergoes a process whereupon their socially constructed value skyrockets as more and more people begin to form emotional—albeit parasocial—connections to this person. In the eyes of the public, they cease to be a person and are turned into a functional deity, a figure upon which many folks feel comfortable projecting their desires and insecurities.
Capitalism’s place in this process is all about profitability. Capitalism, hoping to latch onto the meaning and mythology being created in real time when someone is on the rise to superstardom, supports this deification process. Capitalism needs celebrities, and in a way, celebrities wouldn’t exist as we know them today without the aid of capitalism.
Chappell Roan wasn’t aiming to become a global pop phenomenon, and even if she was, she certainly wasn’t counting on such a meteoric rise occurring almost overnight. However, once this rise was underway, the profitability of Chappell Roan—the celebrity, the project, the public figure—skyrocketed. Even just adopting elements of her style, like a pink cowboy hat or a white painted face with big auburn curls, conjures the spirit of Chappell Roan. Her trending success creates a cascading effect whereupon others can also profit from her fame, despite having had little to no involvement in her rise to stardom. As I write this, Halloween is just around the corner, and there’s sure to be scores of Chappell imitators roaming about at the end of the month.
While Chappell and her team will not receive royalty payments for every single Chappell-inspired costume sold in October 2024, a few folks at the top of certain retail chains will likely make a small fortune on those costumes. People who choose to go the custom route will be able to put money in the hands of small business owners who are seamstresses and costume designers. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and when Venusian concepts such as these become co-opted by capitalism, imitation can often result in cold hard cash.
However, the rise never lasts forever, and particularly for female-presenting celebrities, the “downfall” is to expected as part of this Venusian cycle. There’s many different conversations that can be had about the effects of cancel culture ramping up in recent years for both celebrities and average folk alike, but for now, the conversation I want to have is about the sign of Libra.
Chappell Roan is a Libra rising, and while her birth time is not publicly known, I would be willing to bet her ascendant falls within the first decan of Libra. This decan is represented by the Two of Swords tarot card, and speaks to the more war-like side of Venus. This isn’t a contradiction of Venusian principles, but rather a different expression of them: in order to achieve harmony and peace and justice, conflict and discord and injustice must first be brought to light so that they may be confronted and transformed. Sometimes even a neutral stance is received as a declaration of war, when values collide.
On an interpersonal level, the first decan of Libra is where we speak up, even at the risk of initiating conflict, because we care very deeply. This is where the uncomfortable but necessary things are said. This is where imbalances are brought to light. When Chappell Roan was quoted saying that she didn’t feel comfortable giving an official endorsement for any presidential candidate in the United States’ election this fall, adding that “there’s problems on both sides,” she wasn’t trying to create conflict, but rather (I believe) attempting to draw attention to an inherent injustice within the United States political system—the two-party divide and the often futile nature of voting in a system where gerrymandering and a racist electoral college make most of the actual decisions before a single vote is cast. Her stance of neutrality, which came from a lack of trust in political institutions such as the Democratic and Republican parties, within an emotionally charged pocket of time for her nation, sparked outrage.
As a result of the outrage and pushback she received when attempting to clarify her feelings further, Chappell (who has been public about her multiple mental health diagnoses) cancelled a festival slot she was scheduled to perform at, and this is where the second part of the Venusian value cycle of celebrities kicked in for her. People who were neutral or even supportive of Chappell’s comments beforehand were now upset—why? Because now, money was involved. Profitability came into question, along with a lot of other things about Chappell Roan’s ability to ‘handle’ an unprecedented rise to global fame. Frankly, most of the takes about Chappell’s festival cancellation were riddled with poorly-veiled ableism (“I care about mental health, buuuuuuut…”), as well as complaints about lost money due to travel expenses and ticket purchases. Disappointment is a natural emotion to experience when your plans fall through at the last minute, but this wasn’t just about people’s feelings of disappointment or frustration, it was an overwhelming sentiment of discarding Chappell Roan and discrediting her as an artist that struck me as incredibly Venusian.
When the socially constructed value of a person or object begins to fall, capitalism responds. Profitability is all that matters, so the second the social scales tip and it’s no longer profitable to co-opt a person or a narrative, capitalism dips out. Another way to explain this phenomenon would be the market adjusting to changing demand. While I certainly don’t believe these recent incidents are enough to topple Chappell Roan’s newly minted spot as a pop star for good, it did give me pause. It made me think a lot about cancel culture and the way, when whole humans are treated as disposable based on the whims of socially constructed value, we have effectively internalized capitalism.
Viewing whole human beings—which celebrities are, too—as passing fads or wholly disposable the second they don’t reflect your own internal values back to you is an example of how capitalism has attached itself to the ways human beings create meaning. Capitalism doesn’t need to try so hard to perpetuate itself when it has people perpetuating it on its behalf. The myth of value, in this sense, isn’t the myth that value exists at all; we’ve clearly seen that socially constructed value is real and tangible and has direct consequences. The myth of value, in capitalist terms, is the myth that all value can be quantified and standardized. If nothing is except from being assigned a numerical value, then it follows that under this capitalist myth, nothing is exempt from commodification, either. Nothing is sacred under capitalism, and this flies in the face of all that Venus knows and is.
Thank you for reading.
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