Rihanna speaks out for the first time since that whole business with what’s-his-name, in the latest issue of Glamour:

“Domestic violence is a big secret. No kid goes around and lets people know their parents fight. Teenage girls can’t tell their parents that their boyfriend beat them up. You don’t dare let your neighbor know that you fight. It’s one of the things we [women] will hide, because it’s embarrassing. My story was broadcast all over the world for people to see, and they have followed every step of my recovery. The positive thing that has come out of my situation is that people can learn from that. I want to give as much insight as I can to young women, because I feel like I represent a voice that really isn’t heard. Now I can help speak for those women.”

And I was worried about getting my books back from my ex when we broke up!

A man in China was so upset when his girlfriend broke up with him (via text message) that he threatened to post their sex videos online if she didn’t get back together with him. He also stole her wallet.

This display of chivalry did not make her change her mind. Instead, it made her call the cops. The gent was placed on probation and sentenced to 100 hours of community service. The judge told Chris Brown him he was lucky he got off with a light sentence.

The whole story — bad English translation included — is here.

Obviously an image-makeover move, but mostly, he says the right things.

Speaking of Carrie and Randy, I told you so.

From today’s New York Times:

Moreover, teenage girls can’t be expected to support Rihanna just because of her gender, youth culture experts say. They see themselves as sharing equal responsibility with boys. Parity, not sisterhood, is the name of the game.

During a presentation about dating violence [!!!] to ninth graders at Hostos-Lincoln Academy this week, one girl said, “If they hit you, smack them back. Both my parents say that to me.”

When Danielle Shores, 17, a high school junior in Austin, Tex., heard about the fight, she thought: “Yeah, men hit women, and women hit men. It was blown out of proportion because they’re celebrities.”

She sounded miffed. “My best friend got hit by her boyfriend, and I don’t see people making a big deal about it,” Ms. Shores said.

Good: girls see themselves and their peers as strong, expected to take care of themselves. Sad: that means hitting back — and shrugging it away* — rather than telling anyone who hits them to step the eff off.

What, if not this, is it gonna take? For the moment, I have no answers.

* At least outwardly. Wonder how many are trembling, or at least conflicted, inside.

Another day, another survey showing many teens blame Rihanna for this mess.

From the Boston Herald:

“Experts say teens may be inclined to be sympathetic to Brown because of his popularity and the ‘normalization of violence’ in pop culture. ‘(Chris Brown) is or had been promoted as the kid next door, he was familiar and likeable,’ said [Deborah] Collins-Gousby, who works for Casa Myrna-Vazquez, a Boston-based anti-violence organization that operates a 24-hour teen violence hotline and a citywide outreach program. ‘Among teens, I think their first reaction was, well, what did she do to deserve a beating that significant?'”

The right question to ask, of course, is, “Who says anyone ‘deserves’ a beating?” The attitude captured in these surveys speaks to a disturbing misunderstanding of and desensitization to violence, “dating” and otherwise. That said, I also think there’s some interesting, if misguided, feminism at work underneath: the sense that today’s young women are now too strong to be mere “victims.” It’s utterly wrong-headed in this context, yes, and the “silver lining,” such as it is, is tarnished  by the incident that brought it all up. But: no one in this conversation is about to call women “the weaker sex.” And that, in its own twisted way, is progress.

Listen to Oprah! Tyra too! (And BG!)

… is the wrong question to ask about Rihanna.

From BG’s alter-ego, at The Daily Beast:

You probably heard that singer Chris Brown, after turning himself in for beating his girlfriend, Rihanna, enrolled in anger-management classes in an effort to, as Rolling Stone reported, “repair his image.” Swell. Where can I sign up?

Because as images go, Brown’s seems to be doing remarkably, enragingly, well. True, Brown was promptly dropped from his now-creepy Got Milk? and Wrigley’s Gum ad campaigns, and from the upcoming film, Bone Deep. And it’s not hard to find folks who have forever redacted “Forever” from their iPods. But otherwise, the whitewash seems to be flowing like Cristal at Clive Davis’ bash—and not just from the bonehead sector of the blogosphere (though yeah, there is that).

Singer Ne-Yo told MTV that Brown is still his “homeboy at the end of the day.” Kanye West reportedly asked a crowd to “Give Chris a break.” The New York Daily News asked, “Could Rihanna use [anger management] too?” CNN’s Kiran Chetry wondered if Rihanna—yes, Rihanna—might, moving forward, suffer the “stigma” of abuse. The Chicago Tribune reported that many area teens figured Rihanna must have done something to provoke Brown’s alleged assault. “People said, ‘I would have punched her around too,'” noted one sophomore. “And these were girls!”

Yes, Brown is technically innocent until proven guilty. And America believes in redemption and rehabilitation, often to its credit. But America also has a long and proud tradition of turning on celebrities quicker than you can say “Perez Hilton.” We put our stars through the wringer when they hurl cellphones at housekeepers or throw tantrums on movie sets, and in the end, rightly or wrongly, we tend to forgive them. But why is Brown, at least right now, seen as anything but Asshole of the Month? What makes it so easy for people to leap to his defense—at her expense?

Continue reading here.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Ed Loos, a junior at Lake Forest High School, said a common reaction among students to Chris Brown’s alleged attack on Rihanna goes something like this: “Ha! She probably did something to provoke it.” In Chicago, Sullivan High School sophomore Adeola Matanmi has heard the same. “People said, ‘I would have punched her around too,’ ” Matanmi said. “And these were girls!”

As allegations of battery swirl around the famous couple, experts on domestic violence say the response from teenagers just a few years younger shows the desperate need to educate this age group about dating violence.

Yep.

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