Drenched in Vanilla Twilight

I don’t necessarily see Rihanna as role model for me and I think this whole topic was discussed enough (and yet not nearly often enough it seems judging by some of the tweets from Grammy night. I guess you know which ones I mean) but I think the public statement below holds some truth and is worth sharing. RE: Rihanna and Chris Brown having a song together.

“This will be white-hot for a few minutes in the big scheme of things and then it will die down. But what’s going to be left behind is the complicated residue of who Rihanna is as a role model,” he said.

Even before the songs were officially released, Billboard addressed the matter in open letters to Rihanna and Brown. In Rihanna’s letter, Billboard said her pairing with Brown was “not cool, to a whole lot of people.”

“Young girls look up to people like you to guide them through circumstances too complex for them to tackle on their own, and by granting Chris Brown an iota of tolerance, you implicitly encourage others to consider doing the same,” the letter read. “‘With great power comes great responsibility’ is a schmaltzy sentiment, but it’s fitting here — like it or not, you have a different level of power than most of us schmoes because of your pop superstardom, and a different level of responsibility in your personal life than in your music because of the tabloid-infected culture we live in. It’s a burden that is not fair to you, or anyone in pop culture, but it’s one you have to accept.”