Toggle Menu

Does Rihanna Have a Responsibility to Empower Women?

Rihanna's new music video provides an opportunity to think hard about how and when we should protect our kids from violent, sexual and graphic imagery.

MSNBC

June 2, 2011

Pop singer Rihanna has released a new music video called "Man Down" that depicts the singer shooting and killing a young man that had sexually assaulted her. The Parents’ Television Council is outraged. 

The Nation’s Melissa Harris-Perry, in her Thursday MSNBC "Soundoff" segment, addresses the question of whether female pop stars have a cultural responsibility to empower young women in this complicated world. Harris-Perry says she can see how the video shows women they shouldn’t stand  for domestic violence, but we live in a world where violence against young men is also a significant problem. The video is an opportunity, Harris-Perry explains, to think hard about how and when we should protect our kids from violent, sexual and graphic imagery.

—Kevin Gosztola

MSNBC


Latest from the nation