I am downstairs this afternoon, reading the paperback copy of Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope and watching old music videos (2-9 years old) on the Canadian version of MTV. Each song makes me think about where I was in my life when these songs were a hit on the airwaves.
A Backstreet Boys song comes on. It reminds me of when I first moved to Florida, meeting the boys that would eventually be my boyfriends (and then my ex-boyfriends) and being all naive and hopeful that this love would last forever. A Justin Timberlake song comes on and it reminds me of how heartbroken I was when these relationships ended.
And then a Rihanna video--'Umbrella.' It used to remind me of a trip to the Grand Canyon with my lovely godchildren and my dear friend, Tirzah, right before I started law school. Now, unhappily, it reminds me of domestic violence and the way it is underscored by society. Today, Chris Brown, Rihanna's boyfriend (I am going to be upfront and say my Perez Hilton days are far behind me--I learned about their relationship from the news) plead not guilty of biting, hitting, kicking and generally beating up Rihanna after a Grammy party last year. Pleading not guilty is quite bold, especially when you are not explicitly denying you did it. (I, like Rihanna's father, thought if he is not guilty, then who did it?)
It makes me very sad to think that beating up a woman (especially so viciously) is so very commonplace that Chris Brown could mount a case to say 'not guilty.' Being a law student, I tried to think of the plausible defenses Mr. Brown's attorneys could put together and all I could come up with (assuming he will agree he was the one who inflicted injury to Rihanna) is some version of "the bitch deserved it."* She read his text messages, she was jealous, she didn't let him hang with his friend enough, she picked a fight. I will be happily surprised if the defense does not amount to some version of this. But I am not holding my breath.
It makes me so sad that women and men are constantly given the message that females are 'less than' and deserve to be 'disciplined' for owning emotions such as jealousy and fear. I hope my pre-teen goddaughters, when they listen to the 'Umbrella' song, do not take away the idea that getting severely beaten is the price you pay for loving someone. I hope they will grow up in a world where they are empowered to be human beings with real human emotions, including jealousy, and that their feelings are not worthy of contempt.
Watching this beautiful nineteen-year-old girl dance in her leather short shorts again made me aware of the lose-lose situation beauty provides for women. On the one hand, beauty gets you noticed and fills you up with positive attention. On the other hand, your body is a woman's body and thus is fetishized and made into a man's fantasy. I myself used to think my beauty and body made me special and immune to men's disgust. But I slowly learned that was not the case. I could either be a sex object or an object of disgust, but I could not be sexy and enticing and still own the same ground as the men that surrounded me.
If I can influence the girls growing up around me at all--and I am not naive enough anymore to think I will--I would want them to know that their bodies, their beauty, their intellect, all of these things belong to them and they can use them however they please. Their bodies are not objects but living, breathing subjects and there is so much world they can explore. If they felt battered by the system around them (as one very dear friend as recently confessed she is experiencing) I would invite them to stand under my 'umbrella' of compassion and empathy until they are strong enough to walk tall again.
* My first year of Criminal Law brought me the surprising information that there IS such a defense as 'the bitch deserved it.' It is framed in the idea of killing in the heat of passion. Mitigating factors are the fact the woman left you, has 'shacked up' with someone else and is no longer receptive to your pleas for reuniting.
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