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| Yup, Rihanna posted this on Instagram last night... |
Mind you, she famously told Oprah a few months ago that she and Brown were "just friends".
Sure, okay.
Now, you're probably wondering (especially if you are a fan of either of the two) why it matters to me, or anyone for that matter, what they do in their private time. As they say in their new duet off of Rihanna's album Unapologetic, it "ain't nobody's business."
Actually, when you do things like post photos on Instagram or tweet slick messages or pop off at the mouth on Twitter, then it does become the public's business, because you are doing those things in public.
It's obvious at this point that Rihanna simply doesn't care what anyone thinks about her relationship with the man who shockingly and famously beat her face in four years ago. Fans, experts, and even random people on the street supported her and vilified Chris Brown for the incident. The effects of that vilification have lasted so long that people in Sweden have boycotted his concert there, posting the infamous police photo of Rihanna after the beating on buildings. Back in 2008, I made a promise to never support Chris on this site again, in support of the battered pop princess.
Well, no more.
Don't get me wrong. I still think what Chris Brown did was inexcusable, and his insistence on behaving like a petulant, immature brat with a tattoo complex is absolutely pathetic to me. But at this point, the ball has been in Rihanna's court, and she has dropped it. She was given a restraining order to protect herself from him, she removed it. She exploits the abuse for 2009's Rated R and Eminem's "Love The Way You Lie". Chris found himself a new girlfriend, and Rihanna still found a way to slide herself back into his life. She records two remixes with him that didn't need to exist. She then foes on Oprah and proclaims him as a victim, as if she beat him in the face in a blind rage. And now, on her album release week, she publishes a half-naked photo of him to her social media followers.
Some can argue that her behavior can be explained by Chris Brown's "hold" on her, a symptom of the domestic violence that two have shared. I find that hard to believe now; I don't think Chris Brown is smart enough to be that emotionally manipulative. Others will call it love, but that's over-romanticizing a truly disturbing situation going on.
I think it's time that Rihanna takes some responsibility for her part in this public, four year-long soap operatic fiasco that the world has been subject to. Good for her for being so secure in herself that she doesn't give a single damn what anyone thinks, but maybe she should consider, for a second, the message she is sending to people, and it's a bad one. Maybe she should think about what Oprah once said about her situation: "If he hits you once, he will hit you again." Maybe she should watch any Tyler Perry movie since 2006.
What she does, it's time for her, and us, to realize that whatever happens from this point onwards is all on her. I hope that Chris Brown doesn't ever get as angry as he did that night in 2008, but if he does, it was Rihanna who put herself in the position to be in his path. I'm not saying she deserves it, but she does, this time, share some of the responsibility for its occurrence, because she had a way out. Hell, she was out. She walked right back in. She made her bed, literally, and she's going to have to lie in it.
Good luck to them both, but if something happens between the two of them, I won't vilify Chris Brown. I will just shake my head and simply say, "I told you so".
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