Rihanna in nude or “sexy dad”: sacrilege or emancipation?

Rihanna did not become prime minister. This time, controversy and indignation were caused by a photo portrayed by some “inhuman and degenerate”, sur laquelle est vêtue en religieuse, pour la couverture du Springemps 2024 du Magazine. Interview.

This is not a premiere for which Rihanna used religious imagery in her writing. Prenons par exmple sa tenue “sexy pape” (sexy daddy) at the 2018 gala. This becomes a symbolic image, which is immortalized by an effigy in the circle of the singer in the famous Madame Tussauds museum and incited by the magazine Fashion in the ad “Rihanna is heading to the Met Gala.”

Just like on the cover of Interview magazine, some of them played on the gala’s theme, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” “Sacrilege.”

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Pourtant, l’Eglise Catholique is an association of exhibitions and accompanying Metropolitan Museum of Art, in pre-issue plus de carante vêtements papaux in the origins of the Vatican. Archives of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who does not approve of the event, but helps you the most.

Rihanna does not exceed any restrictions on the use of religious symbols in the Catholic religion. In 2021, this man is accused of cultural appropriation for this photo of him wearing a pendant depicting the Hindu deity Ganesha.

A year earlier, Rihanna was exempt from using sacred Islamic text in the music of lingerie brand Savage x Fenty in 2020.

Religious symbolism with cultural provocation

With names of pop stars ranging from Beyoncé to Madonna, Lady Gaga to Lil Nas X, Rihanna uses religious imagery for provocative purposes.

Everything that Beyoncé used in the images associated with Vierge Marie, in these ads about rudeness on social networks, to destroy the associations between white and pure sex, Rihanna parodied the genre of “nunsploitation” – “nonnesploitation”, the suitcase shape de nun – sœur ounonne – et exploitation, un sous-genre du cinéma d’exploitation, ayant connu son zenith au Japan et dans l’Europe des années 1970 – pour jouer avec la questions de la respectability and du bon goût, asking l “Sexual abstinence and the systematic sexualization of the feminine bodies.”

A look different from Rihanna awakens a tolle that meets in the light of ideas that save the image not les femmes doivent s’habiller. The use of religious imagery allows parody to be used to reflect religious ideas regarding the female body.

Christianity is a long-term agreement between strict rules regarding women’s responsibilities. Un certain numbers of biblical texts review modesty for women, note 1 Timothy 2:9-10: “Je veux also que les femmes s’habillent modesty, avec décence et convenance, et non avec des cheveux tressés, de l’or or pearls or jewelry. »

These dress codes are based on specific Christian confessions in the aujourd’hui.

Religious people in what constitutes a folk cultural image

The appropriation of the image of Nonna is extremely important in popular culture and includes cinema, musical comedies, classical comedies, commemorations. Melody of happiness and etc. Sister Act.

In the popular imagination, religions are disciplined, modest, modest, silent and abstaining from sex. In these films, the whole intention is that the ces sœurs, the leading actresses of flamboyant intrigue, undermine the attention that cares about existence, modest and passive.

“The obsession with popular culture for useless people excites à la fois l’interet et l’indignation parce qu’elle remet en Cause l’orthodoxie religieuse”, but also les attentes Socials à l’égard des femmes et les les présupposes culturalls concerning Leur . frame. “Les moines et les prêtres,” for example, is not a scientist who does not deal with issues of anxiety and concern.

Souvent dépeints comme unaccessibles or célibataires, les pretres peuvent être presentés as “sexy” in pop culture pop culture without support, at the level of indignation, images similar to religious women are published.

Les religieuses suscitent une forme d’inquiétude Sociale parce qu’elles sont de femmes qui existt sans les men. The sexualization of religions is the result of a breakdown in ideas about abstinence and purity, and the habituation of associations with women who are part of religious orders.

Il serait reducteur de dire que l’usage de thiste imagerie n’est qu’une prettire d’attier l’attire l’et de suciter la controverse à peu de frais – même si c’est objective le cas.

Religious symbolism is most important to the soul when questions and debates arise about issues that are culturally important, and it relates to religious institutions that are predominant among women, and especially among women of color. Rihanna’s erotic images, when present at a religious function, serve as a protest against women’s ideas of almsgiving and piety.

His motherhood is in question

Magazine Sur la couverture du Interview, Rihanna exposes her involvement in poetry. Les seins exposés dans l’art religieux have never been controversial: in the quelles Marie allaite l’enfant Jésus there is one of the unmentioned “madones allaitantes”.

Ici, le sein nu ne provoque pas d’indignation parce qu’il s’agit d’une image axée sur la mère – Marie nourrissant l’enfant Jésus – et que la mère est vierge.

Religion plays an important role in modern culture. In fact, if these symbols and these iconographies find reasons for religious traditions, they are also cultural products, in the sense that the reaction to Rihanna – and other celebrities adopting religious imagery – is a symptom of anxiety that causes perte de control. Christianity in its symbols.

Il est donc révélateur que lorsqu’une femme s’exprime et décide de la façon don’t elle a envie de se presenter, cela soit perçus par certain dangers and blasphemy. In the fund, this reaction to the coverInterview it has a lot to offer about social and cultural attitudes surrounding women and Rihanna’s body.