Rihanna put some clothes on

Rihanna; the gorgeous R and B star with a voice like a fog horn on the pull, is in trouble for gifting an audience member with a lap dance as part of her life London show. This comes after her X Factor performance only just squeaked by Press Complains Commission and a Northern Irish farmer chased her off his land for wandering around his acres half dressed and presumably scaring the cattle.


I know, as a feminist I should be defending her right to dress like a trafficked street walker, but, I just don’t buy it. Why does empowerment for young women so often involve being half naked in public? I can’t image her male equals having to wander about in a thong to keep themselves relevant. Kanye West, P Diddy, Jay Z present themselves as media moguls, head of corporations while their female equivalent seem to have to act like the sort of women they’d hire for a dodgy staff party.

When evidence of the horrific domestic violence she experienced at the hands of Chris Brown emerged, within months her record company responded with a sexier look and a record “S&M” that played up the frisson of sex and violence. The last pop singer who had her personal demons exploited for public success was Britney Spears, and we all saw how happily that ended. In the words of Destiny’s Child, a band that would never have been caught dead rambling round any field in the nud- “Child, put some clothes on”