It's always handy to have a particular individual upon whom all of the disapprobation in the world can be heaped. Currently, that person is Rihanna, who traps poor journalists on private jets, gets them drunk, then forces them to write captions under pictures of her with hardly any clothes on, saying that it's just really dreadful, isn't it, that she doesn't have a bit more self-respect. Even better, her highly sexualized image has, in real life, attracted violence from a man she is too screwed-up to condemn for it. Which just goes to show …
What does it go to show? Mainly that the media likes to portray women as whores, then fulminate over the great shame that they aren't virgins. One of the great troubles with the media is that it thrives on dreadful, damaging cliche in all but one respect: it hates to blame the messenger.
