“Come and put your name on it,” is the first line in Rihanna’s song “Birthday Cake.” She is referring to her female anatomy as she dances in a hip-centered motion, reminiscent of Caribbean movement.
Across the globe, reactions to the song’s connotation and the provocative dancing varied greatly, each individual interpreting the sequence of events based on their own experiences, culture, race and gender. Regardless of the response to the song, the fact that Rihanna’s persona and image are an implication of something greater than herself cannot be denied.
In this episode of the Oxford Comment, Adanna Jones, contributor to the Oxford Handbooks Online, Oneka LaBennett, author of She’s Mad Real: Popular Culture and West Indian Girls in Brooklyn, and Treva Lindsey, author of the forthcoming Colored No More: New Negro Womanhood in the Nation’s Capital, discuss the transnational icon, born in Barbados with Guyanese roots instilled from her upbringing, that challenges the exploitation of the black female body, female empowerment, and what that means in a global space.
Featured Image Credit: Rihanna performing at the Kollen Music Festival 2012 by Jørund F Pedersen. CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The post Rihanna and representations of black women – Episode 39 – The Oxford Comment appeared first on OUPblog.
Can a fashion retailer take a photograph of a celebrity, print it on a t-shirt and sell it without the celebrity’s approval? Yes, but sometimes no – not when the retailer has previously gone out of its way to draw a connection between its products and that celebrity, in this case Robyn Fenty, aka Rihanna. How did this begin?
The post Rihanna, the Court of Appeal, and a Topshop t-shirt appeared first on OUPblog.
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The Record in Kitchener, Ontario recently featured story about a student art project which had students creating sculptures from discarded books in honour of Freedom to Read Week. The display will be displayed at the Forest Heights Community Library until the end of March.
Libary Manager had seen a similar project in a Toronto library. She approached Wendy Bonza, visual arts teacher with the idea. The Kitchener Public Library provided students with discarded books to be made into sculptures that express what reading means to them.
Pictured is Kale Hofstetter with his work "For Reference." Kale was thinking about what it would be like to have reference questions answered by a book.
