![]() Over the years, you may even have spotted a sullen woman on the beach, dressed head to toe in black, larded with factor 50, thunderously glaring, as though someone had stolen the flake out of her 99. Obviously I’m a sunscreen mega-nag – if my children want to ruin their skin (or, God forbid, worse), then it won’t be on my watch. Well, I say “tans” but let’s call them by their real name – visible sun damage. Then there were the tans, even more proudly displayed because they were not “out of a bottle”. What is this – 1976? Has nobody heard of sun protection? What utter idiots, though it seems to be part of a wider malaise.ĭuring this hideous dehumanising heatwave, as I like to think of it, what has amazed me even more than the fact that so many people truly believe that they rock in a Hawaiian shirt (sorry, most of you don’t), has been the amount of pink, sore flesh on show. Life’s a beach, and then you fryĭermatologists have expressed concern over the new sunburn-art trend, where sunscreen is artfully placed to create shapes on people’s burned skin. At least it proves how it definitely ain’t any prettier (or more forgivable) than the male-on-female version. BBHMM raises issues not only of race (the plot did not require specifically white victims), class (the wealth signifiers of the female victim dehumanise her in time for her death), but also of blatant female-on-female hatred. ![]() Still, as co-director, Rihanna can’t pretend this video was forced upon her. Men aren’t asked to make pro-male decisions every single moment of their lives. I’m sure we’re all feminist-enough on our lazy days, but since when did that mean that you get to craft a woman-hating, sub-snuff video, and that’s fine because the visuals are great and you’re a bestselling artist, mwah, mwah?ĭoes citing artistic licence excuse misogyny in a video? As a well-known victim of domestic violence, maybe – astonishingly – Rihanna doesn’t give a flying one about other females? This is her choice. Certainly, it’s not good enough to say that Rihanna is a globally successful artist calling the shots in a male-dominated industry that (yay!) is feminist enough. ![]() Pop culture is one of the most powerful mediums we possess for talking to each other part of the ongoing conversation in explaining ourselves to each other. Again comparing the similar furore surrounding Eminem, he never seemed to need to add naked male victims. Apparently, it’s not “HOT!” enough to spend a seven-minute video merely killing a man. Rihanna already has the (clothed) male victim, to make her unwieldy plot work, but still the (unclothed) female is added – obviously to increase the sex quotient. Not only is reversing gender roles very pat and tired, BBHMM doesn’t even follow through properly. ![]() Moreover, just because, in Rihanna’s musical sphere and beyond, there are misogynistic male artists, this doesn’t automatically give her the same “privileges”. I always felt that sometime Rihanna collaborator Eminem’s material featuring murdered women (Bonnie & Clyde Kim) worked as urban cartoons, within which he made valid points about the fragile nature of uncontrolled male rage.īy contrast, BBHMM’s plot (I’m angry with an accountant so I’m gonna kill his chick) has no nuance no artistry. It’s even difficult to excuse it on the grounds of artistic expression, given how crude is the video. The main issue here is surely: misogyny, who’s allowed to do it? And the only answer can be: nobody. Perhaps more than Rihanna knows herself, because the BBHMM video also serves as a study in celebrity delusion: take away the skin colour and the “white spoilt bitch” has far more in common with real Rihanna than the gangsta Rihanna she’s portraying, whatever she likes to think of the state of her street cred. We were all a little unsure before – but now we know. Thanks for co-directing that, Rihanna, and for demonstrating how female-on-female torture and murder are just as “SEXY!” as the male-on-female versions.
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