open letter to rihanna

dear rihanna, or should i call you robyn?

let me first note that i am not a hater. i really like your music and i absolutely adore your style. i admire the prowess you and your management team showed after your first record--how you so gracefully transitioned from cutesy caribbean girl to chic pop star without losing that island spice. so honestly, i like you, and i want to continue dancing to your music.

however, i will dance to it without paying for it. and i will never think of you as shrewd again.

i am a mother of a little girl, who will someday meet a boy and think she's in love with him. perhaps she will be in love. perhaps he will be exciting and passionate and uber talented and popular with the ladies. he will inspire that crazy, quixotic spirit in her that will make her ignore red flags, pass of the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as something she ate and act in a way everyone who loves her will hate. we all have a love like that, it's kind of a sad rite of passage for the young.

and i hope, with all my heart and my entire being, that as her mother, i have instilled enough self confidence and self worth and self love in her that her relationship with that boy will fizzle with just a broken heart--not broken bones or swollen eyes or a bloody mouth. or worse.

too many young women are victims of abuse. the numbers are simply staggering. women 20-24 have the highest risk of being victims of intimate partner abuse, while the same age group has the highest risk of rape. 4.8 million women in the u.s. are assaulted by their partners every year. [that's more than half the population of new york city, ya'll.] and who is at the biggest risk? young african-american and latina women, who experience violence at DOUBLE the rate of white women. [sources: bureau of justice stats]

rihanna, this is the group of women that largely make up your fanbase. they look up to you for your talent, your success, your lavish lifestyle, your style and your spunk. they are the rabid girls on twitter, your #rihannanavy, who will probably send me hate mail if they read this. perhaps they also relate to you because your boyfriend beat the shit of of you. maybe--it the stats are to be believed--it's because they or their friends have been victims as well. perhaps, it's sadly, something they've come to accept. or maybe, they, like you, have gotten over their hurt and anger and are young and hopeful and idealistic that people can change.

i believe people can change. and maybe your buddy chris brown has. but girlfriend, he beat you to near unconsciousness. he threatened to kill you. yes, he served his sentence and picked up the pieces of his career. even as he's shown over and over that he has an uncontrollable temper and makes absolutely awful decisions. and i've met him. he's a young, sweet, charming, super talented guy. i liked him. but reuniting with him, making music with him, tweeting back and forth with him and possibly getting back together again is the worst kind of message you can send to your fans and all the young women and men out there.

by your actions, you aren't just forgiving him, you are rewarding him. men will see this as a sign that it's ok to hit someone, even that you somehow deserved it or liked it. women will see it as something to look over, to forget, to giggle about. it does not validate the girls who will get hit tomorrow or the next day or the next day. it brushes victims under the rug. the facts are, abusers rarely change their patterns if they continue to get away with their behavior.

you have a responsibility to the women who idolize you to set some kind of an example. you don't have to be perfect, you don't have to be boring, but you need to, to be frank--take this shit seriously. you might love chris brown, but you can't act like you love what he did. you can't try to turn this into some kind of sordid romance. you can't encourage this behavior. domestic violence hurts, scars and kills. and it's not a game.