By Olivia Levande
All week the news (and the gossip blogs) has been saturated with coverage of the Rihanna/Chris Brown incident which took place over the weekend.
The LAPD detectives on the case must be taking the files home and slipping them between the matress to safeguard them, because the photos of Rihanna, the report itself, and Brown’s mug shot all remain unseen by the rest of us.
And we truly do not know what happened because we were not there. All signs point to Brown “allegedly” beating and choking Rihanna unconscious, but again, we do not know the details.
We know they did not show up for the Grammys. We know that Brown was booked and released for “allegedly” making threats against Rihanna (something in the tune of “I’ll kill you”) and will likely face charges of felony battery as well.
I personally started paying attention to this situation because I have a lot of tweens and teens and young adults in my life; each of whom are working to find their way and understand how the world works, and why people do the things that they do. I knew immediately that many of them would be shaken by this incident.
I am not a fan of either Brown or Rihanna, but young people are. They view them as the Prince and Princess, two young people in a fairytale romance. She is beautiful, he is “fine”, what more is needed for a successful relationship, right?
In attempting to rationalize how such a thing could happen, and how such a “wonderful” person (Brown) could do something so horrible, we hear the youth saying things like “well, what did she do to provoke him?” And then the “I heard” nonsense begins.
“I heard she gave him an STD.”
“I heard she slapped him in the mouth.”
“I heard she was cheating on him with Jay Z.”
Brown himself has gotten in on the blame game. According to the New York Post, he’s posted an update on his private (Christopher Maurice Brown) Facebook page: “You’ll begin to see her true colors. Believe it!”
Now let me say this. I know just as well as anyone that women and young women are not perfect, in fact, I know first hand how women can do some really foul shit to a man, okay?
If people are not wondering what Rihanna did to “deserve” what happened (“allegedly”), they are criticizing the 20 year old poptart for staying in an abusive relationship, as rumors and reports point to a history of abuse. Many say she “should have known” that Brown was the abusive type.
It is easy to sit in the chair of judgement over what is going on in another person’s life. All I have is my own personal frame of reference.
I consider myself to be reasonably inteligent. I love myself and would never dream of letting someone hurt me. But I also know what it is like to be young and without experience to draw from. I know what it is like to have the man that you love, whether worthy of that affection or not, punch you in the face like you are a man, and then choke you on the living room floor while he calmly tells you that he is going to kill you, and that no one will find you. I know what it is like to live with someone who has two different sides; the public and the private. I know what it is like to be convinced that because of his public reputation, that no one will ever believe what he does to his woman behind closed doors.
I know the shame that is felt at that age, the utter humiliation at the mere thought of telling someone what has happened. I know the mental battle of blaming myself for his rage and abuse.
I was not home on time.
Dinner was not up to par.
I did not move quickly enough when he asked me to.
I embarassed him in front of his friends.
My own tween daughter has been struggling to make sense of what has happened with two people she admires the most. I have been adamant that nothing excuses violence in relationships, by men or women.
“But what if she gave him an STD?” she asks.
“Then he can be mad at her and break up with her. And he can be mad at himself for not using a condom in the first place; that was his choice.”
“But what if she didn’t like using condoms?”
“Then he had the opportunity to choose not to have sex with her.”
“But mom, come on, what if she did something, seriously. What if that’s the reason why he did this to her?”
“And what if she did not do anything at all? What then?”
The question- and the answer, left her unsettled. “I thought it only happened in adult relationships.”
“Then I am very glad we are having this conversation.”
Excellent piece Olivia. The convo between you and your daughter is especially profound and I feel ashamed I haven’t had the same chat with my own daughter.
Because of this piece, I most certainly will.
Thanks.
Olivia,
Eons ago when I was young, I was going through the same thing you once did. Like you, I thought I was intelligent enough to not allow anyone to abuse me, but honest to God, he threatened or hit me for the same exact examples you used above. And it still took me two years to get the hell out.
My older daughter, who’s 19, and Rose have been brought up to know the signs and to come to me if they need help extricate themselves from a relationship if violence happens. The older one has had to put that to the test-and she passed, getting out when her boyfriend got violent.
Rose was listening to her Ipod the other day when a Chris Brown song came on. She turned it off and said she thinks she’ll wait to play his music until she knows what really happened, because hitting your girlfriend is not ok.
I guess I got the message through.
Nice piece. Another angle on this story that really bothers me is that they broke up months ago and were “encouraged” by their handlers to attend these grammy-related events together for publicity purposes. Perhaps she saw some early signs of trouble and did the smart thing and called it quits. Then her management/label/whomever manipulates her back into the situation and something awful happens.
@ Karla. I am so disgusted by that.
How about lets wait until all the facts get in. Maybe she provoked it….and got what she deserved.
Jay
“Maybe she provoked it, and got what she deserved.”
That’s the same lame kind of mentality that has people beating kids to death, beating wives to death, shooting each other to DEATH. “She/he pissed me off, provoked me, and I went off- she/he got what they deserved!”
Pissing someone off-by any means-does not give anyone license to batter them. Giving in to self righteous indignation is the same as saying that the person who offended you got the best of you. They won! they got to you! When you raise your hand because you got pissed off and you lost control of yourself,you are declaring yourself and showing yourself as weak minded, weak hearted, and weak in spirit. Easily made a fool. Rising to any kind of bait. Insecure.
And apparently longing for prison time.
The fact is, it is against the law to hit a person. It is called assault. It is not against the law to talk trash, insult, taunt, tease or humiliate another human being. It’s not even against the law to give someone an STD*. Not nice or wise, but not unlawful.
Allowing oneself to be provoked, giving in to the urge to retaliate, looking stupid, making a fool of oneself, being vengeful, suffering the consequences…is it really worth all that? It just isn’t manly behavior. Be a man! Take a deep breath, head for the door. Nobody gets hurt. Nobody dies. Nobody dies.
*Knowingly giving someone HIV may be against the law, it is hard to prove the “knowingly” part.
Excellent points and every parent of a teen or tween should be having these conversations with their children. You made the point well…it doesn’t matter what she may or may not have done. It is never okay to hit a woman. Never.
“How about lets wait until all the facts get in. Maybe she provoked it….and got what she deserved.”
That people honestly and publicly would state something like this in 2009 both saddens and sickens me. Maybe she provoked him, maybe not. It doesn’t matter. She didn’t deserve to beaten or abused. When are men going to take responsibility for controlling themselves? She made him mad, so she deserved a beatdown? Puh-leeze.
I dread the day my daughter begins dating and when she does, I hope that I have guided her well enough to avoid guys with attitudes like this and to “run, don’t walk to the nearest exit” if she realizes she is in a relationship with an abuser.
Article showing how accepting our kids are of this:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-teen-domestic-violence-20-feb20,0,1424689.story
Hey Spook! Thanks for the comment.
Jay,
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but seeing as how you didn’t have the “ingredients” to make yourself public, you’ve kind of shown how worthless your logic is.