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If You're Offended By Rihanna's Nudity You're Missing The Point

Rihanna's bra-less, erotica-thriller fuelled videos are deconstructing social norms that place gender limitations on how women choose to express their sexual liberty, or how they should expand it or simply own it.
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Singer Rihanna arrives for the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles, September 6, 2012. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (UNITED STATES - Tags: ENTERTAINMENT) (MTV-ARRIVALS)
Mario Anzuoni / Reuters
Singer Rihanna arrives for the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles, September 6, 2012. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (UNITED STATES - Tags: ENTERTAINMENT) (MTV-ARRIVALS)

Society responds favourably to the Dollys who conform to gender role expectations, but not so much to the Rihannas.

Earlier this year, Rihanna dropped her eighth studio album ANTI -- she is currently on world tour whilst unleashing videos back to back, leaving society to go bonkers over the perpetual nudity showcased in her work.

The latest video, titled Needed Me, showcases Rihanna wearing a sheer ensemble with just a thong, allowing her double lattes to hang free and totally shying away from the princess image.

Lyrically she doesn't need any saving from a prince on his white horse, because she has already set a record on Billboard Hot 100 that surpassed The Beatles for second-longest cumulative weeks at No. 1 with her song "Work," featuring Drake.

"What is up with her and being naked. Like why show that to the world? Respect has been lost," commented one user on YouTube.

Her latest video displays the disparity between male and female privileges -- especially when it comes to using nudity as an art form.

The uproar over the use of nudity in her latest video displays the disparity between male and female privileges -- especially when it comes to using nudity as an art form. The responses are cockamamie, considering that Adam Levine can be butt naked in his song "This Summer's Gonna Hurt Like A Motherf****r," and still get away with it accompanied by an applause.

Rihanna's bra-less, erotica-thriller fuelled videos are deconstructing social norms that place gender limitations on how women choose to express their sexual liberty, or how they should expand it or simply own it.

"I got to do things my own way, darling. Will you ever let me? Will you ever respect me?" Rihanna asks in the opening track of ANTI "Consideration."

Rihanna's videos also reaffirm the pressures of living in a male-driven society that demands a continuous supply of sex so that the male spectacle feeds off pleasures derived from objectifying women.

If Rihanna chooses to use her body to refuse conformity, so be it.

Towards the end of Needed Me, Riri is seen entering a strip club gunning down what looks to be a member of a drug cartel. Perhaps it's OK that she pulls the trigger.

If you didn't understand her concept, she is directing a metaphorical bullet towards the patriarchal structure that is oppressive to women. She is clearly opposing this dominance over the female, and she is using the same vices men use to extenuate their power, including money, drugs and strippers -- and she ain't apologetic.

Rihanna is combating the video vixen image that has been perpetuated in the mainstream hip-hop and R&B genres, in which black, sexually charged females have been successfully commodified since the 1990s. Rihanna is hypersexualized in her video, but unlike video vixens, Rihanna has agency of her body and looks comfortable in her skin.

The Harmony Korine-directed clip shows how far the Barbadian beauty is pushing the envelope in regards to owning her nudity and not conforming to gender social constructs.

If Rihanna chooses to use her body to refuse conformity, so be it. If you haven't yet figured out her deviance -- she is demolishing sexual boundaries, so it's probably time you stop bickering about her and get with the program.

Besides, didn't she already tell you that she was a savage?

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