mangalore today

Rihanna?s pop porn is polluting young minds


Mangalore Today News Network

March 23: On the cover of the latest issue of American Vogue is a sultry shot of the pop singer Rihanna, posing in a skin-tight, transparent chiffon and lace dress.


Vogue: It’s yet more publicity for the girl from Barbados who, at just 23, has a string of No 1 hits and is currently at No 5 in the UK charts’


It’s yet more publicity for the girl from Barbados who, at just 23, has a string of No 1 hits and is currently at No 5 in the UK charts.


Her latest release is called S&M. Its first verse includes the lines: ‘Feels so good being bad/There’s no way I’m turning back/Now the pain is my pleasure.’


Vogue: It’s yet more publicity for the girl from Barbados who, at just 23, has a string of No 1 hits and is currently at No 5 in the UK charts’


Raunchy moves: Rihanna often puts on a provocative performance in racy outfits on stage


You can hear its catchy refrain being sung by children all over the country right now: ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but chains and whips excite me.’


In the ordinary course of life, young teenagers would have no need whatsoever to know about sadomasochism. But thanks to the increasingly revolting music industry, they are now all too familiar with almost every permutation of the sex act.


Rihanna’s pop porn is polluting young minds

Rihanna is by no means alone in the pornification of pop music. There’s a new single out at the moment by Skepta, a rapper from Tottenham, which is accompanied by a music video that I can only describe as hardcore porn.


It features explicit footage of a couple having sex, makes Madonna’s previous antics look like Watch With Mother and I suspect is being passed around via mobiles and laptops by teenagers all over the country.



Dirty music: Jessi J and rapper Skepta have sexual lyrics and the rapper has a particularly explicit music video out currently

Although it’s become a truism to say that today’s teens are the most over-sexualised generation ever, that doesn’t mean they know everything there is to know about sex — in fact, most of them know much less than they pretend.


But it does mean they are an easy target for a cynical music industry that continues to pump out ever more pornographic images and lyrics to sell records.


One friend of mine was deeply upset recently to hear her nine-year-old son singing on the school run, along with his friends, the chorus from a song called Do It Like A Dude.


The piping voices in the back of the car were rapping: ‘Dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty sucker/You think I can’t get hurt like you, you mother******.’


This lyric, by the way, is sung by an attractive 22-year-old Essex girl called Jessie J — and it reached No 2 in the charts last year.


Of course, my friend’s son has no idea what the words really mean. He’s also too young to find Jessie J’s frantic gyrations arousing. All he knows is that the song is rude — and like little boys the world over, he delights in saying words that he knows are prohibited.


However, he’s also at a vulnerable age when a child’s personality is still in the process of being formed. What children see, hear and do before adulthood can have far-reaching consequences.


Can we honestly say that the boys listening to all these mainstream songs that glorify aggressive sex will not be remotely affected later on?


S&M is only the latest in a long line of hits by the lissom Rihanna. I particularly remember a huge hit recorded with rap star Eminem. ‘I feel so ashamed I snap/I laid hands on her/I’ll never stoop so low again/I guess I don’t know my own strength,’ he raps.


To which Rihanna replies: ‘Just gonna stand there and hear me cry...But that’s all right because I like the way it hurts.’


This from a woman who was notoriously beaten by her former partner Chris Brown — and who, as a child watched her alcoholic father repeatedly beat her mother.


Why isn’t she telling the kids who buy her songs by the million that violence towards women is never acceptable? Why is she making songs that glorify near-rape? And why is the icily chic British Anna Wintour — the editor of American Vogue and herself a mother of two — putting Rihanna on the cover of her magazine? The answer, of course, is money.


By giving Rihanna the cover of the world’s most influential women’s magazine, Wintour makes Vogue edgy and bestows upmarket sophistication on the impoverished girl from Barbados. As Rihanna herself says breathlessly about the Vogue cover shoot: ‘It doesn’t get much bigger than this.’


Rihanna is estimated to be worth £70 million already. She, Jessie J, Skepta and their ilk rely on people like me feeling outrage. They want to be seen as treading on forbidden ground because there’s nothing like it for boosting sales.


So why should they — or Ms Wintour — care about the emotional stability of the children who make them ever richer?