THursday morning THoughts
I have a confession to make: I jam out hard-core to music in the car. I am not a shower singer but turn the music on in a car and I’m gonna belt it out! This past year I did a lot of driving in France as an Au Pair. Just ask the kids and they will agree that I’ll sing just about anything. My most recent car jam session favorite is Rihanna’s “We Found a Love.” The beat gets me going and I think she is actually singing nicely which is not always the case with Rihanna.
But then I watched the video (clip in French) and I am a bit disappointed. Not so much by her outfit, whichshocked the man who owned the fields in Scotland where she filmed it a month ago, but more I was shocked by her message. What was she trying to get across in a video portraying a self-destructive relationship? We are all aware of her history with Chris Brown and the tragic ending but it seems to me Rihanna has not moved on. She has chosen to twist the abusive relationship saying it’s ok to be in a partnership where you’re not being positively lifted up but instead dragging each other down to drugs, S&M, physical violence, verbal abuse, etc. She got hurt so now she will do the hurting too.
“We found a love in a hopeless place” might mean that life was hopeless and these two people found each other. But the problem in the clip is that then they stayed together in a hopeless place. In the beginning of the video she even states that she wishes for the bad stuff in the relationship so that she can have the good.
Why not make songs telling woman to be strong and find healthy love, positive relationships? Just last night I was reading my Marie Claire October issue (being back in The States means my subscription is once again useful) where Reese Witherspoon talks about her work with Avon. One of the aims of Avon’s Foundation for Women is to combat domestic violence. Reese’s article focused on her recent trip to Russia and Poland where domestic violence is an unspoken issue. In Russia there are no laws against the crime and in Poland 12 percent of women have experienced domestic violence. So why doesn’t Rihanna, after being involved herself in a case of domestic violence, do as Reese and Avon and try to change the negative? Instead she is making racy videos that say being strong as a woman means taking the hits (literal and figurative?) and hitting back.
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Tags: domestic violence, Marie Claire, Rihanna
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