![]() Like other people our age, she was early-Internet, probably didn’t have a cellphone until, like, 2004-2005 at the earliest, and may have spent her early teenage years plugged into the only social network we had at our disposal: the food court at the mall. Rihanna is my age - younger by like half a year, if anyone’s counting - so I know she was probably in sixth grade in 2001. ![]() In 2016, it’s cooler for stars to present more attainable images of beauty. There are so few stars, but now every woman everywhere can dress like Nicki and Rihanna. It shows a particular awareness of financial privilege on the artist’s behalf (ex: Nicki designing a line for KMart back in 2014). What’s cooler than a million-dollar dress? When the most glamorous, successful and stylish women in the world use their image and fashion choices to inspire their fans in a more direct sense. Real folks wearing their own clothes to dance (and eat!) at a spot where they’d actually hang out and dance and eat. ![]() It was cast, he explains, with a mix of Rihanna’s IRL friends and local kids who attended an open call. The video was shot by Director X on location at a Toronto Caribbean restaurant-dance-spot, a cultural center X explains in a wonderful interview over at Fader. So, Rihanna’s “Work” video is wild cool because she, and every woman in it, looks like she’s wearing clothes from the mall. In a world in which even the most rebellious awards ceremony in recent memory is still overwhelmingly white, we must exalt and uplift images of glamorous, successful black women. Somewhere between the overwhelming whiteness of being and the desire to see women in dresses that don’t cost as much as a new Audi and look like absolute shit, I flashed back to the greatest cinematic achievement released in recent memory: Rihanna’s doubleheader video for “Work,” the first single off her much-loved recent release Anti. When someone on the red carpet is truly just feeling herself, we all know. Ban the bleached teeth and assholes of the Illuminati give me a middle-aged Australian anarchist who looks like she bought her outfit at Christopher & Banks. Black jacket bedazzled with a roller derby patch that looks like it came from JoAnn Fabrics? Check. No wonder we all found Mad Max: Fury Road costume designer Jenny Beavan’s outfit to be the most remarkable of the evening. ![]() Who are these unremarkable people with individual incomes to rival those of small countries? Why do they look so goofy in such expensive, tame clothing? Fashion is full of miracles, so where were the swan dresses? (Possible answer: staying home in protest.) Ill-fitting strapless nightmares abounded (the best comment of the night went to my boyfriend, who asked why Sarah Silverman looked like she was being squeezed out of a tube). The world’s elite came together for one night and it was as awkward as a high school prom. The red carpet was a veritable Ringling Brothers parade of brightly colored, twenty-thousand-dollar gowns on colorless bodies with interchangeable heads. Last weekend’s #OscarsSoWhite served as yet another powerful reminder that, in general, the United States Entertainment Industrial Complex is suffering from a sort of ecological disaster in which a parasitic species (fine-boned, unhappy-looking white entertainers) has dramatically outnumbered other members of its genus (glamorous, powerful black entertainers). ![]()
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