Awful

Will Everyone Stop Dumping On Rihanna? That Means You, Tina Brown

When I first started working at The Jane Dough a year ago, I was excited to write about high-achieving women in powerful positions — women like Daily Beast powerhouse Tina Brown and Golden Globe winner/HBO show creator Lena Dunham, among others. Though I couldn’t see eye to eye with some of their political stances, I loved that they were breaking barriers for women, brushing off criticism from naysayers, throwing themselves into work they loved and passion projects, and tirelessly pursuing something greater than themselves.

But even successful famous figures such as Dunham and Brown aren’t above trashing fellow women in the spotlight just because they can. A few weeks ago, Dunham rambled about how hurt she was that Rihanna got back together with abusive ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, as Dunham follows Rihanna on Instagram and was so shocked and upset by the sight of the two singers getting high together in bed.

“She’s had this amazing career, she’s won a Grammy…She’s talented,” Dunham explained to Alec Baldwin in a podcast. “And then she gets back together with Chris Brown and posts a million pictures of them smoking marijuana together on a bed. And it cracks my heart in half in a way that makes me feel like I’m 95 years old.”

I’m only going to type this because I’m on my way out of this job, and you’re only going to read it once, so enjoy: Are you fucking kidding me? What cracks my heart is the fact that people seem to reward this kind of thinking and trample on Rihanna because she did something they happen to believe was stupid and irresponsible.

Once everyone shut up about Dunham’s preachy moment, Brown inserted herself into the conversation, which I truly wish didn’t exist at all. On Thursday, media mogul Brown lashed out at Rihanna, tweeting:

And you know what makes a totally awesome, inspiring role model?! A 59-year-old woman who cyberbullies and smears a 24-year-old seemingly because said 20-something went back to an idiot ex-boyfriend. This is why pundits like The Week columnist Matt Lewis, an early adopter of Twitter, now despise the social media platform. It has become, as Lewis wrote last week, “like high school, where the mean kids say something hurtful to boost their self-esteem and to see if others will laugh and join in. Aside from trolling for victims after some tragedy, Twitter isn’t used for reporting much anymore. But it is used for snark.”

As one can see from the screenshot above, Brown’s tweet got a lot of likes and retweets, proving Lewis’s point that Twitter can be a tool to harass in packs, and yesterday, Brown was the leader of the pack. The Regina George, if you will.

As for Chris Brown, he does seem to be a mega rage monster with an underwhelming maturity level, but we can’t tell Rihanna how to live her life, and she never once gave the impression that she aspired to be a sweet role model figure like Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, or Carrie Underwood.

Is Rihanna nuts to take back a man who brutally beat her several years ago and attend the trial for his court sentence? Probably, but how many times do I have to say that their relationship is none of our business? How many celebrities have to share their views no one cares to hear before the rest of us see how insane, obnoxious, obsessive, and creepy it is to constantly nitpick a celebrity’s love life?

Brown may have excellent journalism and business credentials and Dunham may be the biggest thing in the world today, but this constant shaming of Rihanna from other famous figures, all of which aren’t even friends with the Barbados pop star, is incredibly discouraging, especially as I exit from The Jane Dough and women’s news blogosphere.

While I have been energized and impressed by the amount of successful and forward-moving women I’ve covered and interviewed during my tenure at this fun, fearless site, I’m pretty disappointed to leave the platform as some of the most accomplished females in the country feel the need to shoot down fellow female celebrities to feel better about their own lives. I may not be an expert on female empowerment, but I know this isn’t it.

TAGS: lena dunham | Rihanna | Tina Brown

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