so hard: reasons i love rihanna

two summers ago i was chilling with my abusive boyfriend of the time when rhianna’s video for ‘what’s my name?’ came on. she was rocking the bright red hair (like mine) at the time. my boyfriend started in with his emotionally abusive behaviour, telling me “now there’s a girl i could really be with”, letting me know all the ways he thought rihanna was better than me, more of a ‘good girl’ and less of a ‘slut’, painting a fantasy about who he wanted rihanna to be and who he wanted me to be.

i had an epiphany in that moment. my self esteem was really low, i’d been putting up with his abuse for awhile and it was wearing me down. he was offering me an easy scapegoat for my feelings. i could hate rihanna. i could take all my insecurity and sadness, all my unexpresed rage against my boyfriend and i could put it on rihanna. i could let out all my internalized misogyny in an attack on another woman. i could hate her. it would be an easy ‘solution’ and it’s what many women do. we live in a world that promotes women hating other women, that thrives off jealousy and competition. my boyfriend was betting on me taking the bait but i didn’t. i made another choice. i reminded myself that i like rihanna, that i have been a fan of her music, her style and her attitude since i got my hands on ‘good girls gone bad’. i reminded myself that my boyfriend’s fantasy about what rihanna meant as a ‘girl he could really get with’ said more about him than about rihanna as a person or me as a person. i did not hate her. i decided to like her. a lot. and her music ended up being a light for me as i worked my way out of that abusive relationship and the grief process that followed.

i’m a feminist who loves pop music and i want to start writing about that on this blog. pop culture is full of of amazing women who i look up to and who inspire and empower me. rihanna is a badass punkrocker who opens up possibilities for women. she emanates strength, confidence and intelligence. and no matter how many times she is called ‘little miss sunshine’ that is not the vibe she gives off because that is not how she presents herself. she does not come across as simply passive and sweet. and for my ex to apply that ‘good girl’ image to her is to blatantly ignore her regular expression of her active sexuality. likewise, the haters who have been saying she is ‘too sexy’ now are also blatantly ignoring the intricacies of the image she produces. she is neither good girl nor bad girl, slut nor victim, because she does not present these terms as mutually exclusive. a listen to ‘loud’ presents a woman who falls in love, who is a survivor of domestic violence, who grapples with rape culture, who enjoys s/m sexuality and who does not pigeon hole her sexual possibilities.

i really look up to rihanna. and these are just a few reasons why.

1) she fights back. a dutch magazine called ‘jackie’ recently printed an article that stated that rihanna dresses like a “n-word bitch”. rihanna responded to the racist attack on her twitter writing:

“Your magazine is a poor representation of the evolution of human rights! I find you disrespectful, and rather desperate!! You ran out of legit, civilized information to print! There are 1000′s of Dutch girls who would love to be recognized for their contributions to your country, you could have given them an article. Instead, u paid to print one degrading an entire race! That’s your contribution to this world! To encourage segregation, to mislead the future leaders to act in the past! You put two words together, with the intent of abasement, that made no sense…”NIGGA BITCH”?!….Well with all respect, on behalf of my race, here are my two words for you…FUCK YOU!!!”

eva hoeke, the editor of the magazine, resigned after rihanna’a reaction. not that it in any way makes up for the racist attack on rihanna. but rihanna fuckin impresses me. she is not afraid to show her disgust, her anger and her intelligence. she is not afraid to use her voice. i think this sets an awesome example for girls. girls and women of colour deal with racist and misogynist violence every day. rihanna just opened up a new and often unimagined possible response for many women. you can tell your perpetrator to fuck off.

(i want to note that i am in no way saying there is any shame in not fighting back. many times we are too tired, busy or it is unsafe to fight back. admiring her ability to say ‘fuck you’ is not meant as an attack on those of us who don’t/can’t react that way.)

2) she dismantles rape culture. as i already mentioned, rihanna expresses a fullness of her sexuality, an ability to like some things and not others, to experience both sexual violence and pleasurable consensual sex. she does not remain within any particular sexual role whether it be ‘wife/girlfriend’, ‘seductress’, ‘victim’ etc. and therefore it takes the work of blatantly ignoring what she is saying/doing to objectify her into one of these roles. for those of us who are paying attention we get to see rihanna showing us that sexuality is a part of women’s complex lives, that it can come in many forms and that women will have many different feelings about it. we get to see that women are often neither exclusively ‘victim’ or exclusively ‘seductress’ or exclusively ‘romantic’. that we are in fact a mishmash of all these things at different points in our lives, because we are human, changing and complex. not static objects.

the video for her song ‘man down’ begins with rihanna(‘s character) shooting a man. the video then tells the story of the day before and the events that lead to the shooting. it reveals that the man she shot was her rapist. what i love, love, love about this music video is that it humanizes rape victims. it makes us into human beings who existed before and who exist after the assault and who have complex lives and complex emotional reactions to our assaults. it also shows rihanna(‘s character) as friendly and talkative, a member of the community who is kind to children and older people, all the while walking around in cute heels and being sexy and flirtatious. it humanizes her and turns her into someone we don’t want to see violence happen to but it does this without subtracting her sexuality. this video says that yes, she can wear cute heels, smile and wave at men, be flirtatious, dance sexy and NO, none of that is a justification for rape. i could probably write a ten page paper on this video and what it means to me, but i will leave it at this for now: thank you rihanna for taking on rape culture and exposing it for what it is.

3) she did drag. as slash. i don’t know if this one really needs an explanation for it’s awesomeness. rihanna made an appearance dressed as slash in her music video for ‘rockstar 101′. and slash was featured on the track. being a huge gnr fan and a huge rihanna fan, this is like a dream come true for me. and she looks damn hot as slash.

4) she won’t stop grabbing her crotch.  ‘you da one’ is the second single off rihanna’s new album ‘talk that talk’. at first glance, it is a love song. it was an immediate hit and i, like many, fell in love with it right away. the video just aired and it surprised (and outraged) a lot of people. there is no love interest depicted in the video. just rihanna by herself, repeatedly referencing her vulva. (the fact that men regularly reference their genitalia in many genres of music is so obvious that it shouldn’t even need mentioning. there is a clear double standard operating when thousands of youtubers are freaking out that rihanna is referencing her vulva.) the sexuality of this video adds a new dimension to the song. this song is not only a love song. it is also a song about the sexual desire and pleasure of a woman. in this sexist, objectifying world the message that a woman’s own desire is important is radical. and that is why she is getting so much hate for it. i am addicted to both the song and video. i love seeing her confidently enjoying and expressing her sexuality. it’s inspiring.

another thing worth mentioning about this video is that she is dressed up like the guy from ‘a clockwork orange’ at parts of it. i don’t think a lot of the youtubers caught that reference and if they did, it did not concern them as much as her referencing her vulva. i think it’s interesting. i personally hate the movie ‘a clockwork orange’ for it’s depictions of sexual violence. i have always felt that the movie positions sexual violence as a result of men’s ‘inherent uncontrollable sexuality’, rather than as a result of misogyny and rape culture. the fact that she is dressed up as a symbol of men’s ‘uncontrollable sexuality’ in a video where she is being criticized for her own ‘uncontrollable sexuality’ is definitely interesting. i don’t think her sexuality is out of control at all, but i definitely think that women expressing an active and confident sexuality are often portrayed as dangerously out of control, especially women of colour.

i think the extreme misogyny and slut shaming in the youtube comments speak to how radical this music video is. there is no point in reposting them here but they are really disturbing. it upsets me that people are freaking out at rihanna for simply expressing her sexuality but i am again impressed with rihanna. when you piss people off that much you are probably threatening some basic way of thinking. rihanna is threatening the possibility of restricting women to a purely passive sexuality. and i thank her for that.

and here is some further feminist reading on rihanna:

http://andthenkeirsaid.com/2011/11/21/rihanna-talk-that-talk/

http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2011/06/02/man-down-on-rihanna-rape-and-violence/