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The Nation's Pulse
Big Girls Don’t Cry
The hip-hop sounds of domestic violence, starring Rihanna and Chris Brown.
Ain’t there a woman I can sock on the jaw?
— David Bowie, “Young Americans”
Last week, America greeted the news that hip-pop princess Rihanna was headed for reconciliation with boyfriend Chris Brown. This was the same Chris Brown, for those not keeping track, as the dumb brute who (allegedly) punched in her face like a ripe fruit during a pre-Grammy altercation, rendering her unable to perform and an object of public humiliation.
But in an emotionally and intellectually enlightened era such as our own, humiliation is to be overcome whatever the cost, and our favorite celebs have money and youth to burn. “Domestic violence experts said they were dismayed, but not surprised,” the Daily News reported. “Yet they remained concerned what message this would send to the 21-year-old ‘Umbrella’ singer’s fans.”
No message they haven’t already heard elsewhere — or, indeed, a pessimist might object, most anywhere. It’s morbidly consoling, but ultimately silly and plain wrong, to claim that young women these days are more vulnerable than ever before. (Life in days of yore wasn’t worse for girls just because their options were more tightly restricted. It was worse because they had to rely more fully on bad men, too.) Yet it’s true that girls today are asked to be tougher and more forgiving, sexier and less sexual, more masculine and more feminine. And they’re rewarded accordingly. The more successful a girl wants to be, or is, the greater the risk she has to take on for the punishing consequences of living on the edge.
So Rihanna tops the pops with a song called “Rehab,” and Pink, another of the new-model starlets who’s both hypermasculine and hyperfeminine, cuts a video for “Sober” (notice a pattern?) that climaxes in a rough, heartless makeout scene between Pink and — Pink. With self-abuse like this, who needs boyfriends?
To be sure, critiquing the excesses of celebrity sex is easy enough — so much so that its peddlers, like e-tabloid “queen” Perez Hilton, can easily integrate the ridicule of the trashy into a product that revels in trash. What matters about life in the days of Rihanna is how desperate we are to show that roughing and toughing up our women is a price we’re happy to pay to be as free as we are, and to know it. Any civilization capable of producing Angelina Jolie — and “Fox,” her traumatized, superhuman, suicidal character from last year’s Wanted — has to be free, right?
If we’re too willfully obtuse to cop to this logic, it hasn’t been lost on our friends overseas. In a heroic effort to overcome liberal contempt, the state of Israel has been reduced to playing on our paradoxical passions. “The Brand Israel project,” Haaretz reported,
seeks to counter the country’s aggressive and religious image abroad, using common marketing tools. If Israel is perceived as a hard, unpleasant place, resembling an armed evangelical village in Texas, then it is worthwhile to reveal softer sides to the West.
A year and a half ago, the Foreign Ministry sponsored a photo essay in the men’s magazine Maxim, which presented bikini-clad Israeli models as former soldiers. A survey carried out after the publication showed that the readers caught on to the message and perceived Israel as a more liberal country, more similar to the United States than they had originally thought.
To repeat: draping your girls in sex and violence softens your image in America. Or, that is, liberalizes it — making it both the ultimate in softness and hardness.
Nonetheless, obviously not every girl can be as hyperfeminine and hypermasculine as the stars of page and screen. It takes too much effort, too much talent, and too much support staff. (Even a well-intentioned federal rehab program for the hard-partying unfamous could hardly be expected to work half as well as the exclusive, secluded oases created by the private sector.) For many girls, a culture that reproduces hypersexed expectations of both varieties trickles down as tedium and boredom — a string of uninhibited but unrewarding hookups, and a career-oriented disciplinary default that gives education and learning all the charm of an annual sales competition. For others, both work and play wind up no more or less recognizably average than they’ve ever been for ordinary Americans. And for some, as traditionalists often fear, the model of Rihanna and Pink, of the uzi and the bikini, creates opportunities and pathologies that lead the less fortunate into mistakes from which they can never recover.
Cruelly enough, every culture can flourish atop a pathetic and degraded underclass. The “big girls don’t cry” ethic, flush as it is with the risks and rewards of toughness and freedom, encourages us to write off the meltdowns of females famous and obscure alike as the price of a culture of individual choice. In a free society, some irresponsibility, at the top and the bottom, is inevitable. But the unanswered question we face is what happens to the daughters of what Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam call the “mass upper class,” the female “organization kids” that David Brooks has described. We all seem to want a big, competitive, aspirational middle class, but the wreckage in the fashionable lane is piling up, and the young women of that class have reason to grow cynical and jaded about the dullness that creeps into their simultaneously more manly and more girly lives.
What they’ll need, however, is a real alternative. Our genius for cultural novelty notwithstanding, we still haven’t managed to give them one.
About the Author
James Poulos is a doctoral student at Georgetown and the former Political Editor of Culture11. His writing has been published by The American Conservative, The National Interest, The New Atlantis, Partnership for a Secure America, and The Weekly Standard. In addition to AmSpecBlog, he has blogged at The American Scene, Doublethink, and Postmodern Conservative, which he founded. With degrees in political science and law from Duke and USC, he is currently at work on a dissertation about life after Napoleon. In his spare time he anti-blogs at Pish Tosh.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (77) | Leave a comment
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Melvin| 3.6.09 @ 7:28AM
"Big Girls Don't Cry, Hyper-feminine, Hyper-masculine." Horse squeeze
In my day, Chris Brown would be labeled as a, "Punk," but in todays Hip Hop culture being a thug is being celebrated as being, "The Man."
Even Rihanna's father, who intoned, "I support my daughter's decision to reunite with Chris."
I'm sorry people, I am a father of a daughter and it would take the entire LA police and Sheriff's department to keep me from slapping the dog squeeze out of Chris Brown for punching my daughter.
You may notice I said, "slap," because Chris Brown isn't man enough to be punched and he deserves to be slapped like the punk that he is.
It irks me to no end that America is accepting this thug behavior from Chris Brown as, "Oh, this is what celebrities do each other."
Where is the outrage from woman's rights groups, were is the outrage from the National Organization of Woman. Why is there no marches or complaints from the NAACP to stop to degradation and violence to woman that the Hip-Hop cultures espouses?
Where's Jeremiah Wright, Rev. Al, and Jessie Jackson? Only their condoning silence fills the air.
I like to envoke something my wife told me many many years ago. "I'm only 5' 1", but always remember dear, you have to sleep sometime."
Andre| 3.6.09 @ 8:32AM
The outrage is the same place it was when Clinton did what he did - shoved on the back burner for the sake of celebrity and hipness. Things like this are only considered "bad" when done by unfamous or uncool people.
Andrew Batten| 3.6.09 @ 8:41AM
This sorry incident shows us once again that we are a culture unable to differentiate between fame and infamy. Indeed, perhaps there is no longer any clear dividing line between the two.
What real punishment will Chris Brown face? It is obvious that the victim of his violence is more than happy to put up with more, so she won't make much of a witness. A short trip to prison? His next album will sell twice what the previous one will, and a line of nubiles will be waiting for him outside the gate upon release.
Let us not forget O.J. Simpson's terrible fate: murder an ex-lover and you are forced to move on to an even better-looking, more compliant lingerie model in her place. Oh, the cruelty of it all!
imxio | 3.6.09 @ 12:05PM
It's just not this complicated. As a culture, we have no morals. And this is just one of the tediously inevitable consequences.
We have encouraged and idolized barbarian behavior. We can hardly be surprised when we find ourselves surrounded by barbarians.
Doctor Right| 3.6.09 @ 12:29PM
Hip-Hop is the lowest form of musical-type entertainment (I won't call it "music"), and it appeals to the lowest types of intellectual impulses.
So a low-life Hip-Hop performer is beating his Hip-Hop performer girlfriend..?
Who cares?
...Yawn...
Pete | 3.6.09 @ 12:35PM
Strong parenting, from strong parents (both) is the only antidote to our often perverse pop culture "values". Somewhere along the way, girl-child women like Rihanna have been woefully orphaned.
mhr| 3.6.09 @ 12:46PM
No great outcry from Gloria Steinem, NOW and the feminist crowd? Feminists are also quiet on the treatment of women in islamic countries.
stefie| 3.6.09 @ 1:19PM
mhr, there is stone silence from the nags because this incident has no political advantage for them. Neither do the poor women in islamic countries. It has never been about "womens rights". It's all about politics and the control of women in that veil of "a womens' right to choose"
Alan Brooks| 3.6.09 @ 1:21PM
excellent excellent piece.
but at least let us be glad stars wear bikinis at certain events, or as the Israeli ex-soldiers were in the magazine.
Because we are happy women in the limelight are not stark naked-- save that for the boudoir.
Alan Brooks| 3.6.09 @ 1:28PM
...that's it, please never criticize people for the clothes they wear, just be glad they are wearing anything at all.
Paul| 3.6.09 @ 1:48PM
A real man does not beat up a woman.
Alan Brooks| 3.6.09 @ 1:50PM
you mean a GENTLEMAN does not beat up a woman. A real man is liable to do anything.
Interloper| 3.6.09 @ 3:08PM
Actually, it is the very white and very British Amy Winehouse who topped the chart with a song called "Rehab." Neither Pink nor Rihanna is a hip hop artist. Both are mainstream pop acts. As for Chris Brown, he is a romantic balladeer, which is why his misogynist behavior is so controversial. But, let's not let facts get in the way of your daily race-baiting, eh, James Poulos?
Domestic abuse is a huge problem across allrace, class and gender lines. To try to claim it is somehow the fault of a genre of music (which is not even the applicable one for the artists cited) is utter foolishness. Indeed, if one were to link cultural fare to the issue, country music, which often reflects cross-gender tension, would be a candidate.
But, thanks for bringing up the song "Rehab." With Rush Limbaugh in the news, I had been think ing about it:
'They tried to make him to go rehab,
He said "No! No! No!"
They tried to make him to go rehab,
He won't go, go, go!
He said "I ain't got the time,
And my dittos think I'm fine.
They tried to make him to go rehab,
He won't go, go, go!
He said 'I'd rather take a Dominica stay,
Where my hookers heave and sway.
'They tried to make him to go rehab,
He said "No! No! No!"
He said: 'I never want to be sober again,
Rushbo's oxycontin is no sin!'
They tried to make him to go rehab,
He won't go, go, go!
'I don't want to spend weeks,
Away from the vices I seek.
'They tried to make him to go rehab,
He said "No! No! No!"
Pete | 3.6.09 @ 3:24PM
Interloper, never let brains get in the way of mindless drivel, you buffoon.
CH| 3.6.09 @ 3:39PM
Rush never beat up a woman like the scum-sucker you're defending, Intergroper. Doesn't seem to bother you that Obummer's a chain-smoking cokehead, too. Liberal tool.
Jabberwok| 3.6.09 @ 5:02PM
Actually Interloper, had you taken the time to do your own fact-checking, you would realize that Rihanna also did a song called "Rehab." It is on her "Good Girl Gone Bad" album. It isn't that hard to find w/a good search engine. So in your own self-righteous "Rush" to judgement, you have made yourself look foolish. Good for you.
Interloper| 3.6.09 @ 5:33PM
Duh! James Poulos is referring to the hit song, "Rehab" which is definitely not by Rihanna. And, as I said, he got everything wrong about the artists because he latched on to the Rihanna/Chris Brown drama for the purpose of race-baiting. Poulos is not remotely interested in music.
And, say J, learn to spell the j-word 'j-u-d-g-m-e-n-t.'
Rick Josey | 3.6.09 @ 5:37PM
Some people never learn. They keep going back to what's familiar, even if it's detrimental to them.
The same thing is happening in politics. People keep voting in liberals, even though they attack the basic values most of us cherish.
Some people never learn.
Until the pain gets too great. Let's just hope we have enough freedom left this time to recover from their stupidity.
www.PatriotHangout.com
Anti-Interloper| 3.6.09 @ 6:22PM
Interloper is our scummy liberal spelling teacher. Thanks for the correction, loser.
ECM| 3.6.09 @ 6:57PM
And, say J, learn to spell the j-word 'j-u-d-g-m-e-n-t.'
Actually, super-genius, both ways are perfectly acceptable.
Seymour Glass| 3.6.09 @ 7:44PM
Interloper: good of you go point out the factual errors. But - how can you call this column "race baiting"? Please give some backup on this. Thanks.
Kaylee| 3.6.09 @ 10:09PM
Uhh... feminists and women's rights organizations have definitely NOT remained silent about this, or about the treatment of women in middle eastern countries. Also, while some of the author's points about the contradictory messages sent to young women are interesting, notice he doesn't have much to say about the young men, even those who beat up their girlfriends. Wouldn't it make more sense to search for "real alternatives" for the people who are so incompetent at interpersonal relationships they put their girlfriends in the hospital when they get pissed off?
Sam| 3.6.09 @ 11:00PM
What is this article saying? I literally don't see a thesis anywhere in here, one way or another. This just seems like disjointed rambling. Is anything being asserted here? TOPIC SENTENCES people!
Also, let's not confuse ourselves that abuse is the result of a liberal culture. Abuse has been with us since the beginning of time and let's also not forget was condoned by "traditional" value-systems for centuries.
I think we can all agree that our current culture has some serious, even grave problems and lack of moral compass, but to blame that on liberal ideology is bullshit. Put the blame where it belongs: on a money-obsessed culture that objectifies and dehumanizes women.
It just so happens that conservative ideology encourages both those things.
Oh, and is the author blaming Rhianna for this somehow? I'd be outraged but it's so poorly written I can't even tell what he's asserting
Emily| 3.6.09 @ 11:53PM
What the hell? You don't make any sense.
Alan Brooks| 3.7.09 @ 12:00AM
these acts are managed by liberals, not dignified classical music impresarios.
God, why do these trolls come here.
Matt| 3.7.09 @ 2:32AM
Correction: liberal ideology is bullsh!t. And Sam, you've got sh!t for brains!!
CH| 3.7.09 @ 2:34AM
Uhhhhh, duhhhhh, Kaylee, what feminist groups have spoken out on female oppression in the Middle East? Since you're so sure of yourself and all. Just because you say it, doesn't make it so, moron.
Concerned Parent| 3.7.09 @ 3:27AM
Thanks. My kids had never heard of these losers, thanks to my careful sheperding, but this site is on my safe and, dare I say, encouraged list and now all I hear is begging for this smut. Thanks! Why is this story newsworthy in any way? Youre going on my block list, and I will try to make the kids forget this sin.
George| 3.7.09 @ 1:08PM
feminists and women's rights organizations have definitely NOT remained silent about this
Need to cite some links or articles or interviews. NOW et al have been stone silent about Chris Brown because they don't want people like Interloper and Sam to call them racists.
It just so happens that conservative ideology encourages both those things.
I'd be embarrassed to walk around that ignorant.
CH| 3.7.09 @ 4:20PM
Concerned, good luck to your kids when they go out into the big bad world and don't have mommy shielding their eyes for them. If this site is too sinful for them, I don't know how they're going to survive in the real world. Get a grip.
El Wayne| 3.7.09 @ 11:07PM
Interloper........get a grip and/or a job. Whatever your community organizing comrads can get for you but SHUT UP and SIT DOWN . Would it be mean if I called you a booger eating moron you reverse bigot?.....or just more reverse bigotry? Your're a first class boob, dude, correcting people's spelling and grammar and such. And being the Race-Cop for this site. This ain't no class room, you ain't no teacher and its because of your political ideology that weez all (cluding ewe) just abunch of undereducated nonspellin hicks...of all colors, skin-tones, ethnicities and nationalities. I'll apologize apriori if you're highly educated...if so it goes to prove one of my favorite axioms ever heard-some people are educated waaaaay beyond their intelligence. Again, stow it and sit down...fool! Jus Kiddin....caint we all get along?
SM| 3.7.09 @ 11:33PM
"Yet it's true that girls today are asked to be tougher and more forgiving, sexier and less sexual, more masculine and more feminine. "
You know, you could put the word "boys" in there in place of "girls" without altering the truth of that statement in the slightest.
But sentimental paens to how mixed up life is for a young man don't have quite the same appeal to the people in the magazine industry, where testosterone is looked at more suspiciously than cocaine.
SM| 3.8.09 @ 12:07AM
"It just so happens that conservative ideology encourages both those things."
Yes, we all know that Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt are hardcore conservative ideologues who carry a Bible in one hand and "The Wealth of Nations" in the other. Thanks for playing.
CH| 3.8.09 @ 3:15AM
You forgot that other Conservative icon, Bill Clinton, another purveyor of purity, goodness and morality.
Niki| 3.8.09 @ 5:24AM
I don't think that Rihanna going back to Chris Brown is a conservative vs. liberal media issue as much as it is a sad example of a woman in an abusive relationship. It is a pretty text book case and I would venture to say it has nothing at all to do with movies, pop music, or women in bikinis. Just because Rihanna is in the spot light does not mean she is not a human being who is capable of making the same life mistakes that are made by non-celebrity women around the world every day. It seems like this event is out of context with the rest of the article.
whatever| 3.8.09 @ 6:42AM
sorry, hit enter too early:
http://www.now.org/organization/conference/2008/speakers.html
-read the section on Irshad Manji
http://www.now.org/nnt/spring-2002/hatecrimes.html
-I got this by typing "muslim" into NOW's search box. Now, before you say what some site isn't talking about, could you bother to LOOK at the site, please.
-P.S. if this isn't convincing I can have more in no time
whatever| 3.8.09 @ 6:46AM
one of by post got lost, here is the NOW article about Rihanna:
http://www.now.org/press/02-09/02-09.html talking about Rihanna
"No great outcry from Gloria Steinem, NOW and the feminist crowd? Feminists are also quiet on the treatment of women in islamic countries. "
If you bothered to look at the sites, you would see that this just isn't true. It's one thing to have issues with a movement(I have no problem with that, I have issues with feminism too), but to lie and spreed ignorance, is something I can not support.
whatever| 3.8.09 @ 6:51AM
http://www.now.org/news/readthis/index.html?title=afghan_women_slowly_gaining_protection&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Found at NOW's website under the "Hot Topics" button to the top banner.Seriously, did you even Go to the website? I really want to know because I don't know how you could miss this stuff if you did. (My guess is you didn't)
whatever| 3.8.09 @ 6:54AM
And just to comment on the article. I found that the writing was very convoluted and his point was unclear throughout the article.
Frosty| 3.8.09 @ 1:58PM
Whatever, you call that a 'great outcry'?
whatever| 3.8.09 @ 6:23PM
People said, that feminist were quiet on the issue, I showed that NOW was not, because that was an organization that mhr had called out. I just got a few pages I found by searching for a couple of minutes, my point was to show that people say that feminist don't talk a bout certain issues, when if they spent 2 minutes looking at the site, they would see this wasn't true.
And NOW has already been dedicated to ending domestic violence:
http://www.now.org/issues/violence/
And this is only the stuff from NOW, I haven't really started on other sites.
whatever| 3.8.09 @ 6:27PM
And for NOW, if you go to thier site, uner "issuess" on the box on the right, you'll find "Global Feminism" and see years worth of archives about helping women all over the world:
http://www.now.org/issues/global/index.html
whatever| 3.8.09 @ 6:42PM
At feministing.com:
under upcoming events(just for this week) they have
-BLUE SCARF CAMPAIGN for the Women of Afghanistan
-CHALLENGES FACING IRANIAN WOMENS’ RIGHTS MOVEMENT
-The Gender Dimensions of Terrorism: How Terrorism Impacts the Lives of Women
And that's just for this WEEK
now for articles on feministing.com, there are way too many to post them all, so i'll just show you what comes up in the search portal:
http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=2&search=muslim&limit=20
And for their coverage of Rihanna, once again I'll just give the search results, because there's so much:
http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-search.fcgi?IncludeBlogs=2&search=rihanna&limit=20
How much more will I need to find before I've reached you expectations of a "great outcry"?
And honestly, you should be the ones doing this, not me. Go to some feminist websites some time before you talk about what is and isn't on them.
CH| 3.8.09 @ 7:24PM
What about protests, marches and the bully pulpit? I don't consider articles on their websites to be outrage. Guess your bar is lower.
ro| 3.8.09 @ 7:56PM
Hey - Whatever - thank you for posting that website. Am sick to death of anyone beating up a woman. Christian, Muslim, hip-hop, Wall-Streeter - I give a crap. Don't beat, stone, strangle, mutilate, tent, abase, abuse, hamstring, alienate, rape, subjugate, over one-half of the human population. Sick of it. Over it. Don't care what your "religion" says. Don't care what the OIC says. Don't care what the corrupt, sick, sinful and vicious UN says. I and millions of other women say STOP IT NOW!
Frosty| 3.8.09 @ 11:17PM
Guns are great equalizers, girls.
Jabberwok| 3.9.09 @ 11:19AM
Oh Interloper. Sigh. Again, you seem to be reading more into things than is warranted. Neither "Rehab" songs topped the charts in the US according to Billboard. And I seriously doubt the author of this piece is referring to the charts for the Bulgarian Hot 100. So how is it then that you can discern which song he is referencing? I guess you are more intuitive than I. As for my spelling of "judgement," as a previous poster has mentioned, both versions are acceptable, but I will concede that "judgment" is considered the primary variant. If this is what passes for a victory in your life, I guess I am happy for you.
Scott A Joseph,MD| 3.9.09 @ 3:58PM
I believe Amy Winehouse's version is the one that is important with regards to "Rehab." (It won the Grammy, I believe.) That said, this was a good article on the lack of morality among the entertainment crowd. (Name anyone today who is a James Stewart type role model for the kids. Pat Tillman would have been one, if he lived.)
Sandor| 3.9.09 @ 4:35PM
"punched in her face like a ripe fruit" Just how does a ripe fruit punch in one's face? And it just goes downhill from there. This guy writes for a living?
MT| 3.9.09 @ 11:10PM
Chris Brown is the ripe fruit.
Rich Rostrom| 3.10.09 @ 2:57PM
Sandor: "like" can refer to the actor or the acted-on. "beat him like a drum", or "cried like a baby". Though now that I think about it, when there is an acted-on, "like" almost always refers to it and not the actor.
Scott| 10.10.09 @ 9:25AM
And were all surprise with this? Think about it...Chris Brown isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. What goes around, comes around.
Scott
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Jack| 10.23.09 @ 4:48PM
This David Bowie' quote is nice
Mark| 10.23.09 @ 4:49PM
Yeah, it is
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