What more do you want men to want from women (other than a servant to have sex with)?
It seems no matter how hard women have tried, the goal post about what is and is not acceptable for women is often contradictory. While different people are allowed to like different things, many of these contradictory statements come from the same type of men. While many men chastise single women for not having kids, calling them selfish or alluding to them being undesirable, this is not the only place that men seem to lack consistency when it comes to what they want from a woman.
Rihanna’s Vogue cover had sh-tstain Twitter in a frenzy over the mere fact that the co-most famous person on the entire Earth just happened to be front in center in the picture while the father of her child and a half holds the golden baby.
The stench is seeping from the pores of the same misogynists who question what a woman brings to the table. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot ask a woman what she brings to the table and be upset that she has enough money, well, at least in Rihanna’s case, to buy the entire store. Somehow a woman should have a lot but never more than her man because she might make the mistake of outshining him. He might come undone at the thought that he cannot overpower her, or even worse, she might treat him the same way he would treat her if he were in control —and he certainly does not like that.
Recently Twitter user @thelifeuvJR tweeted, “If I told a chick, ‘lets get some coffee,’ as a first date, and she accepted that, in my head i would be like ‘i cant believe this loser bitch went for this.” The same account sneers at Britney Renner for not only reforming the same behavior he admonished while adding that she is single but all the while also repeatedly posting about how he, too is single.
It seems hypocritical all around.
When it comes to a coffee date, why offer to take a woman on a date that you yourself feel is unworthy? Is this some weird type of test to prove whether you feel someone’s time is worthy of being wasted or not? Tariq Nasheed, current pro-Black cosplayer and former MTV alum who taught white boys how to mack, no seriously, look it up, had a lot to say about Rihanna’s picture, without actually having anything to say. I am sure, though, with his MTV checks, he could have afforded to stay silent, especially since he was drooling over the prospect of Rihanna’s nudes back in 2019. I would bet all the money I had that if Rihanna wanted him and all he had to do was pose with his new family (after quickly dumping the former one) that he would be right there on the beach, squeezed into a black leather suit, looking like a pack of exhausted sausage. Naked toes in the sand with a black towel to wipe off his drenched forehead, right behind Rihanna.
But the thing about drop-dead gorgeous billionaires is that they can only maintain their appeal if they are still somehow subservient to men who have not done the things she has.
It seems like women have limited spaces within which to operate that are comfortable for men. We have to work outside the home but are required to do the bulk of the chores alone. We have to make money but not too much money. We have to be important but not too important. We have to be smart but not too smart.
It very much feels like the only way many men who are commenting about Rihanna’s cover negatively are going to be satisfied is if she diminishes and disintegrates her very much-earned star power for someone else.
The only way her light should shine is if it not outshining a man’s. Men have been taught that no matter how weak, inadequate, slow and dumb they feel, they are still better than women. Rihanna is the embodiment of a very actualized fear that a woman’s greatness cannot be paralleled by most men, let alone any, for that matter. Additionally, Rihanna flies in the face of everything society has reinforced, making a woman seem unlovable, which is the ultimate sin. Rihanna drank, partied hard and smoked cigarettes and weed. She got tatted, cursed, talked bout sex, wore revealing clothes and still managed to be on top, and in love and happy.
So basically, there is no blueprint. The men making up the rules don’t follow them, and the women who don’t follow them end up ruling.