By Katie Kieffer
Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/y8cqbrd
Britney Spears knows what’s attractive: “Confidence is must,” she croons in her hit single, Radar. Male or female – the sexiest quality you can possess is confidence. So, what is confidence?
Songbird, Rihanna, came out with her definition of confidence this week. She told The Sun in an exclusive interview that, “Every woman should have naked pictures taken. In five years my body might not look like this!”
The Sun reports, “It is a new-found confidence for the Barbados-born singer.”
While Rihanna is advocating a bare-all, flesh-focused recipe for confidence, her new album is being outpaced by plain-looking Susan Boyle. Boyle is outselling Rihanna, Lady GaGa and Mariah Carey.
I’ll be the first to admit that Rihanna is wildly talented. I watched her perform live several years ago – in the infancy of her stardom. I noticed two things:
- Her amazing vocal range and beautiful voice
- Her bold sensuality as a teenager. It’s hard to think of any other teen star – Miley Cyrus, Ashlee Simpson, Taylor Swift, etc. – that shook their booty quite as provocatively as Rihanna.
I think Rihanna is selling herself – and the young women who look up to her as a role model – short. She defends her “career strategy” of posing nude by saying, “In five years my body might not look like this!” But, does she want to limit her career to the next five years? She’s obviously naturally beautiful, so she doesn’t have to reveal every inch of her body to “bring all the boys (or fans) to the yard.”
Ironically, she’s playing Russian Roulette with her own career, by drawing so much attention to her body – which she admits is a fading thing – and away from her voice and talents, which could last her lifetime.
Dangle a carrot but don’t throw yourself prostrate in front of the donkey – it will just walk right over you. In other words, get noticed at the football game, but not as the streaker. Rihanna already let one donkey-like character – Chris Brown – walk on her. Now she’s about to let the world do so in the name of “confidence.”
Rihanna's inner tube has a fitting name as she hangs out with the deviant Chris Brown. Image credit: Splash News. http://tinyurl.com/yhyhj65
You get the feeling that Rihanna, tattooed with a gun, wants to show (understandably) her tough girl image to the world and Brown. Unfortunately, she’s so focused on conveying this persona that she doesn’t have the foresight to see it could backfire on her.
Beautiful, stripped coquettes are many in number and cheaply found – it’s called Google, Playboy and Vegas, baby! Just a guess, but I think Rihanna would prefer a long-term career over a five-year shelf life that expires when her body starts to shrivel. After she’s showed us everything, what else is there to know? It’s time to move on to someone new.
Confidence is about having enough trust in your self-worth to leave a few things to the imagination – where the body is usually more beautiful anyway.
I think you make an excellent point. Though part of me believes her self-destructive behavior and self-prostration is more than a lack of confidence – it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what success means and how to build that success.
She is part of a culture that values physical beauty and press exposure over everything else. She has talent, to be sure, but that isn’t enough. Either she or her handlers aren’t measuring success by quality of music or awards. They measure it by celebrity gossip, face recognition, and public buzz.
It is unfortunately all about who’s looking at her right then and there.
Rihanna already let one donkey-like character – Chris Brown – walk on her.
C’mon now, don’t blame the victim. I agree with everything you said here, but abuse is no one’s fault but the man’s.