Good Girl Gone Bad

I was never much of a fan of Rihanna's music until her Good Girl Gone Bad album and the various remakes of her hit Umbrella by Youtube sensation Marie Digby (and others) hit the billboards. Then, I started paying attention.

When news of her being beaten up by Chris Brown prior to the 2009 Grammy Awards show surfaced, I paid attention again.

Like many women out there, I was deeply disturbia... I mean disturbed, when I found out the extent of her injuries. There were bruises, bite marks, her lips were swollen and the photo that was circulated in the Internet do not resemble the beautiful Rihanna that everyone knew.

In fact, the injuries were so bad that she had to cancel her concert tour to Malaysia which was scheduled about a week after that incident. So far, there were no news on her returning to Malaysia but everyone is still holding on to their tickets, hoping to be able to still see her perform.

That is how much faith people (or her fans) put on her. The young generation here are so into her that everytime she has a hit, all male radio DJs shamelessly salivate over her, over the radio, in the morning rush to work and the evening rush back home. They play her songs 3000 times a day.

Schoolgirls have her song as their ringtone, caller ringtone, message tone, MMS tone, their personal album, in their iPods, in their PCs and would play them in the toilet if they had the technology to do so, I think. People look up to her to be an inspiration of how far you can go if you work hard, and that it doesn't matter if you came from a small island or from obscurity.

And so it was so regretful to find out that after all the suffering and pain her boyfriend (I don't think they're in the 'ex' stage yet) put her through, she took him back, spent a getaway together with him, tried to bail the very court that was supposed to charge him for domestic violence, tried not to testify against him; all in all, tried to forget everything that has happened as thought it was not important.

I am aware of and can understand why some battered women remained in households where domestic violence is a daily occurrence. Some of these women barely have an education, and if they do have one, they are not earning enough in their jobs to be able to fend for themselves or for their children (in most cases, children are the main reason they put up with the beatings).

But Rihanna is a superstar who tours in all over the world making millions by swaying hips and belting love songs. She should know better than to act as though it was okay for women to endure domestic violence as part of their life, or their love life.

Maybe she needs a little time to grow up before she becomes a role model for young girls, cause she is seriously sending the wrong message to them right now. And I wouldn't think that it was appropriate or necessary for me to be commenting on a superstar's way of life if it wasn't for the fact that one day, my daughter will be putting up posters of a beautiful superstar all over her bedroom wall, looking up and admiring the way of life that star is leading, and if imitation is the best form of flattery, I really hope she will be imitating a person who has more common sense in that pretty head of hers. For her own sake.