Rihanna - You Da One (by RihannaVEVO)
she won’t stop grabbing her crotch. ‘you da one’ is the second single off rihanna’s new album ‘talk that talk’. at first glance, it is a love song. it was an immediate hit and i, like many, fell in love with it right away. the video just aired and it surprised (and outraged) a lot of people. there is no love interest depicted in the video. just rihanna by herself, repeatedly referencing her vulva. (the fact that men regularly reference their genitalia in many genres of music is so obvious that it shouldn’t even need mentioning. there is a clear double standard operating when thousands of youtubers are freaking out that rihanna is referencing her vulva.) the sexuality of this video adds a new dimension to the song. this song is not only a love song. it is also a song about the sexual desire and pleasure of a woman. in this sexist, objectifying world the message that a woman’s own desire is important is radical. and that is why she is getting so much hate for it. i am addicted to both the song and video. i love seeing her confidently enjoying and expressing her sexuality. it’s inspiring.
another thing worth mentioning about this video is that she is dressed up like the guy from ‘a clockwork orange’ at parts of it. i don’t think a lot of the youtubers caught that reference and if they did, it did not concern them as much as her referencing her vulva. i think it’s interesting. i personally hate the movie ‘a clockwork orange’ for it’s depictions of sexual violence. i have always felt that the movie positions sexual violence as a result of men’s ‘inherent uncontrollable sexuality’, rather than as a result of misogyny and rape culture. the fact that she is dressed up as a symbol of men’s ‘uncontrollable sexuality’ in a video where she is being criticized for her own ‘uncontrollable sexuality’ is definitely interesting. i don’t think her sexuality is out of control at all, but i definitely think that women expressing an active and confident sexuality are often portrayed as dangerously out of control, especially women of colour.
i think the extreme misogyny and slut shaming in the youtube comments speak to how radical this music video is. there is no point in reposting them here but they are really disturbing. it upsets me that people are freaking out at rihanna for simply expressing her sexuality but i am again impressed with rihanna. when you piss people off that much you are probably threatening some basic way of thinking. rihanna is threatening the possibility of restricting women to a purely passive sexuality. and i thank her for that.
for the rest of the article: http://clementinecannibal.com/2012/01/01/so-hard-reasons-i-love-rihanna/
![panasonicyouth:
When I became an actress I quickly realize that the world liked their latinos to look Italian. Not like me. So I wasn’t going up for Latina parts. I was going up for African American parts. […] Regardless of the fact that I spoke the language better and understood the culture better, those weren’t the parts that…I could take seriously. Suddenly you have to explain why I look how I look. And then it gets complicated. And nobody wants complicated.
Gina Torres | Black & Latino
seriously i love this woman so much. and look at all this knowledge she drops. ugh. <3](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyhmp3yMN41qh1240o1_r4_500.gif)
