Rihanna and Chris Brown: Why She Shouldn't Be Judged For Getting Back With Him

Culture

I avoid celebrity dating news at all costs, but the media's obsession with Chris Brown's and Rihanna's rekindled romance is getting really hard to avoid, and when busybody Girls creator Lena Dunham weighed in on the couple for the second time the other day, I decided the unsolicited remarks had crossed the line.

On Alec Baldwin's podcast the other day, the female Golden Globe winner expressed concern over what Rihanna's relationship with known abusive boyfriend Brown will tell fans about love:,

"I used to be really into Rihanna, that pop star, and then it’s like again, I don’t want to ever throw stones from my glass house, but I follow her on Instagram and I just think about how many little girls beyond what I could even comprehend are obsessed with Rihanna. Like you know, she left Barbados, she’s had this amazing career, she’s won a Grammy…She’s talented. And then she gets back together with Chris Brown and posts a million pictures of them smoking marijuana together on a bed. And it cracks my heart in half in a way that makes me feel like I’m 95 years old."

This coming from the young lady whose very own TV show character wastes an entire season with an emotionally and verbally abusive creep named Adam. What does that say to all these "little girls" Dunham is apparently so worried about? The obvious way to stop feeling so awful about this would be to, I don't know, quit following Rihanna on Instagram. She's allowed to post whatever she wants there, and if pot and Chris Brown are too overwhelming, Dunham can easily choose not to look at the photos.

This of course wasn't the first time Dunham wagged a finger at Rihanna for hanging out with Brown post-2009 attack. When the two collaborated on "Birthday Cake" last year, Dunham tweeted, "Rihanna and Chris Brown’s new duets make me want to go hide under Gloria Steinem’s bed for 72 hours." You know what? Go do that and see if anyone cares. I assure you Brown and Rihanna won't. They'll just go back to getting high together in their own bed and probably start thinking about their new song as a pair.

I don't mean to harp on Dunham too much these days, especially since she's far from the only person to publicly talk down to Rihanna for welcoming a potentially dangerous man back into her life. Jezebel has published many pieces lamenting the couple's decision to give it another shot. Comedian Jenny Johnson picked a fight with Brown on Twitter and somehow became a hero for temporarily bullying him off the social media platform. Even Rihanna has said before that she hoped she wouldn't influence other women to go back to abusive boyfriends, but at the end of the day, Rihanna never signed up to be a role model. She's not a Taylor Swift-esque pop figure with a squeaky clean, ultra sweet image that teenagers worship and aspire to have.

To tell Rihanna she's setting a bad example for countless women by taking back her abusive boyfriend places a lot of pressure on a 24 -year-old who may still be trying to figure herself out like pretty much everyone else in her age group. She shouldn't bear responsibility for the tumultuous relationships of the world, and even though Brown certainly seems like a vile person at times, it's becoming really obnoxious to hear random people give their two cents on their obviously complicated connection. If he ends up lashing out and hurting her again as many suspect he will, that'll be for the female recording artist to deal with, not us. They put it best with the title of their new song, "Nobody's Business."