2013-05-21T08:28:05-04:00 Justin Myers http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=justin-myers Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Justin Myers Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3074543 2013-04-14T19:00:00-04:00 2013-04-14T18:10:02-04:00

Justin Myers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-myers/ Mad Men is back after a 10-month absence, relying, as ever, on the power of suggestion to tell us what has been happening to our characters since we last saw them, rather than crude recaps. Exposition is for losers.

In the middle of all the usual talk about Don Draper's tormented soul - not to mention the manhood of Jon Hamm, the actor who plays him - and how Christina Hendricks' body is a victory for feminism (apparently), comes another popular topic: just how awful Betty (Draper) Francis is.

Don's ex-wife, played beautifully and blandly by January Jones, isn't just the character viewers love to hate - they really hate her. Despite playing the wronged wife while ex-husband Don jumped in and out of crumpled sheets all over Manhattan, Betty's usually cold demeanour, especially toward her own children, has singled her out as a popular figure of derision.

Whether she's floating around distractedly looking gorgeous in a variety of period fashions or levelling a tongue-lashing at her smart-mouthed daughter Sally, the erstwhile Mrs Draper can do no right for Mad Men's hyper-critical viewers. While her co-stars are 'complex and interesting', Betty is dismissed as mean, spiteful, spoiled and boring. But, that's rot, I say. Betty is more like any of us than we care to admit. Maybe that's why we're so fond of disliking her.

Betty has spent much of Mad Men's five and a bit seasons supremely bored. Finding herself with everything she thought she wanted - beauty, a dashing husband, a house in the 'burbs and those delightful children - she quickly realised what a crock it all was. The dashing husband dashes out the door to work and gets in late; the children answer back; the walls of her house close in on her and the beauty, as Betty finds in season six when she piles on the pounds, is devastatingly temporary. Betty had ambitions like everybody else, but was told being beautiful and having a family was all that mattered, so she went with it, only to discover she wasn't living for herself at all. Now, beauty aside (in my case at least), haven't we all felt like that at one time or another?

That nothing really ever happens, or is likely to, is one of Betty's biggest bugbears. Madame Bovary she is not. In an earlier season, the deluded Betty bought herself a fainting couch, yet sadly her life lacked sufficient excitement for her to lose consciousness for even a second.

Betty expresses her dissatisfaction in the only way she knows how: passive-aggressively. She eschews emotion for simmering resentment, occasionally letting the sparks fly, allowing us a peek at the madness within, like an immaculately coiffed volcano.

Haven't we all had those crazy five-minute madnesses, where we've wanted to stir up our placid waters and create a tsunami? Betty's mask slips all too rarely but it's wonderfully random when it does. She shoots the neighbours' birds with a rifle (complete with cigarette dangling from her mean, tight mouth), has anonymous sex in a bar just after discovering she is pregnant with an unwanted third child, and attempts to titillate her vanilla husband with a salacious scenario involving the rape of her daughter's sleepover buddy (a truly jarring scene from the first episode of the new season which has had the anti-Betty brigade, and even her supporters, scratching their heads to justify). All just to get a reaction, even if just from her own conscience. She rarely succeeds.

Although her realm is the 1960s, Betty would, in fact, have been perfect for the Twitter generation - half the time she'd be posting cutesy Instagram pictures of cakes she'd baked or boasting about her home decor, and the rest throwing out shock-jock curveball rants about politicians, immigrants and Honey Boo Boo. Like most of us, her ambitions would've been left at the bottom of a sock drawer. She'd probably have a really boring blog - updated less than fortnightly and never spellchecked. Social media and technology would give Betty the chance to vent, to free her anger -- something no amount of trying on pretty dresses for her husband or chastising her brattish children could ever do.

Mad Men's characters are complex creatures, multi-layered contradictions with more hang-ups than the naked eye can see. But, as one internet commenter on a blog I recently read put it, they're also "just a bunch of jerks". And that's what's so great about them. They're just like us, but forty-odd years ago.

So instead of slating Betty, we should perhaps cut her some slack. Despite having every advantage and doing everything right, she still can't quite pull it off. She thought she had it all, but once you have it all, you miss the idea of 'more'. Her calm exterior conceals a maelstrom of self-doubt and horror beneath. As those of us who simmer through our days, saving our outbursts for the internet, can testify, it doesn't get any easier, even if you have got your very own dashing Don waiting on the other side of the threshold and a fainting couch at your disposal.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2454108 2013-01-11T05:10:08-05:00 2013-03-12T05:12:02-04:00

Justin Myers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-myers/
You've no idea how difficult this is to write. After a lot of soul-searching, I decided the only way I could truly express myself and exorcise myself of the brutal demons which torture me is to put everything down on paper (well, on a computer screen and keyboard -- forgive me my artistic licence, but I have a certain image I want to conjure up) and tell you just how I truly feel, how your behaviour has affected me and, purely coincidentally, get loads of people to read it and take sides, whether they realise it or not.

Open letters are the perfect way of reaching audiences traditionally hard to reach: missing children, drug addicts, the Queen, pop stars, world-famous television personalities, and celebrity chefs. They can lend volume to debates which would otherwise never be heard, from often suppressed voices, on the subjects which really matter: healthcare reform, racism, homophobia, calling someone a skank on a TV show or having someone say you're fat and adulterous.

That they're talked about in newspapers and shared on social media is just a happy accident; what really matters is getting something off your chest. With phones so hard to come by and email all but redundant, given that only the intended recipient gets to see it and not half of Twitter, the open letter is the old friend to the exhibitionist, and I am honoured to be writing one right now, to you, knowing the huge effect it will absolutely not have in any way at all. Zero.

While I know I'll get even more attention if I use emotive language - and I am crying burning tears of shame, regret and lost love as I write this - I will not. I will resist telling you how much I agonised over what to say, praying to no God in particular for the strength to make it through this, to tell you what you need to know.

If it weren't for the recent inspiring chain of open letter correspondence between two of our most publicity-shy celebrities, Lady Gaga and Sharon Osbourne. Both make their points splendidly well - the writing one's feelings in an open article leaving little room for playground tactics or fake superiority.

It makes me long for a day when we can all live this way; no more hysterical emails, abusive texts or screaming matches in nightclubs or supermarkets. We should all carry a laptop or tablet with us, and at the first sign of confrontation, put our fingers to one another's lips and withdraw to our screen, frantically typing out our hurt and our anger.

Not forgetting that final flourish, the climactic paragraph of patronising well-wishing, aching regret, before signing it and publishing it to as many blogging services ad social media accounts as our shaky public wifi signal will allow.

Or for the traditionalists, carry a jotter and fountain pen and scribble your missive, before dropping it at your target's feet (but not until you've scanned it and photocopied it and thrown it up on Facebook and Pinterest).

Sure, open letters have their uses and can inspire social change, but let's be honest with ourselves here. Most of the time they're just an excuse to get a little bit of attention from the wider public, a vanity project. The literary equivalent of flinging yourself out of a window at a close friend's wedding because everyone else has a better outfit than you.

Now I've had the chance to share this deeply personal matter with the world, I want to implore you to change. Resist the temptation to compromise your privacy. Don't fall into the trap of feeling a discussion has no merit unless the rest of the world is watching it with one hand on their popcorn and the other on the 'share' button.

But most of all don't ever stop being you, the real you - the person we know is still there underneath. Just be true to that person and do what you need to do to make it happen. Well, apart from the 'writing open letters' thing. You should probably knock that on the head.

Yours truly,
Me. x]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2431783 2013-01-09T19:00:00-05:00 2013-03-11T05:12:01-04:00

Justin Myers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-myers/
It's not hard to see why Styles has chosen to cover up that torso. It's been the subject of attention ever since he shot to fame as part of One Direction in 2010, not least because he seems to have a different nipple for every day of the week. He's public property, and as soon as that shirt comes off, whether on the beach or in a pop video, all the girls' eyes head south from that angelic face for a gawp at the man beneath. So perhaps this is Harry's way of regaining control. It's a shame, then, that he's chosen to assert his power over himself by turning his torso into a public toilet wall, handing out magic markers and saying "Yeah, just have a scribble if you like". While his etchings no doubt have personal significance for him, he looks like he's halfway through an initiation ceremony to be a gang leader in the Gulags.

It's an increasing phenomenon among the young to get themselves inked as soon as possible once they reach adulthood. Tattoos can be a very beautiful thing, a genuine work of art, but many of the more impetuous ink addicts don't care about the quality, just so long as they can have their skin marked as quickly as possible, over the widest area they can get away with before their mother has a heart attack. For reasons which are unclear, 16-year-old Siobhan Fields wanted a permanent reminder of her hero Marilyn Monroe on her arm. She schlepped off to an unlicensed tattooist and instead of the Hollywood siren posing seductively on her arm, young Siobhan was left with what can only be described as a fire-damaged sex doll balancing precariously on her upper arm, leering out at the world with the sexual aura of a half-eaten bag of ready salted. Harry has also gone for the "Ink it before I change my mind" approach, sporting some birds on his chest, names of cities scratched upon his shoulder and various random quotes and phrases scrawled hither and thither, like he fell asleep pressed between the pages of a teenager's homework.

Tattoos are pretty good at demonstrating how you felt or what you were doing at a particular time, but so are pin badges, postcards and angsty entries in your diary. The permanency of tattoos - and they really are there for ever unless you spend a great deal of effort and cash getting rid of them - seems to be an afterthought for many. One girl I used to live with at university shared her horror at discovering her boyfriend had had a tattoo on his bottom without telling her. "And there it was," she recalled, her eyes wide, "a drawing off a cheeky devil on his backside. It's OK for him; he doesn't have to see it. But do I really want to be looking at it in 30 years' time when he steps out of the shower?" It turns out she didn't, and they broke up, although whether this was related to his having the mascot of camp boy band Bad Boys Inc etched into his buttock isn't known.

With every buzz and jolt of a tattooist's needle comes plenty of opportunity for regret. Lots of tattoo art fans meticulously plan their next design, labouring over it and modifying it before their skin feels that first irreversible prick. They know that they have the rest of their lives to share a body with whatever they choose; it's not just a case of messing about with a Biro. It seems that nobody's on hand to tell Harry "no" or advise him to think before he inks. His boyband mates certainly aren't much help; they're just as bad.

At the time of writing, Harry's intense fling with US pop princess Taylor Swift had come to an end, though by the time you read they may well have reconciled, married and got matching pug dogs tattooed on their upper thighs. Will this latest heartbreak lead to him running back to the tattooist's chair? Watch out for a run on red ink if Styles plumps for a series of shattered love hearts around his nipples - each set of them.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1887774 2012-09-16T19:00:00-04:00 2012-11-16T05:12:02-05:00

Justin Myers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-myers/
Social media throbbed with condemnations the world over - old grudges against the paparazzi and, more bizarrely, the French, revived; helpfully given a shot in the arm by some fuzzy shot of a princess's breasts. Euro-sceptics probably allowed themselves a slight smirk, before remembering loyalty to the monarch and her scions should take precedence over glee at any misfortune on 'the Continent'. But in among the fury, outrage and French-bashing on Facebook and Twitter and other un-mopped corners of the web is the dark smear of hypocrisy. "How could they take pictures of her without her consent and publish them?" was the cry of the internet. Well, it's quite simple, guys and girls; quite a few of you do it all the time.

We all have much easier access to a camera these days. Thanks to the endless quest of mobile phone companies to make us loyal to them and use our phones for more and more, our pocket phones have evolved from clunky walkie-talkies into sleek, slimline communication hubs, enabling any thought or feeling or experience you have to break out of the confined cell that is your brain and spewing it out onto the world wide web. Although the early promises that we would all become 'citizen journalists' have pretty much come to nothing, we are all armchair broadcasters and publishers.

One such side-effect of the sickness of sharing and the ease with which the infection can be passed on is the resurrection online of the spirit of a TV show you never thought you'd see in the UK again. Smile, everybody, you're on Candid Camera, whether you like it or not -- and you may never even find out. There's an increasing trend, a craze which is making money for someone, somewhere, but not the direct participants. All you need is a camera, the ability to take a picture without being spotted and a platform for showing it. Suddenly, everyone's a paparazzo -- and you don't even have to be a celebrity to get papped.

One example is a site called Tubecrush, which hosts photographs taken by amateur paparazzi on public transport of men they think are "hot" or attractive. Snappers take the candid shots -- almost always without the subject's permission or knowledge; posed shots are quite obvious and hardly ever make it to publication -- and submit them to the site, whereupon they're assessed by the site's owners and posted on the site for comment.

Let's be very clear: unlike the situation with the Duchess of Cambridge, there's no legal ambiguity here. It isn't illegal to take someone's picture in a public place, and the law doesn't define doing so as an 'invasion of privacy'; travelling on a Tube train is about as public as you can get without dancing in Trafalgar Square singing Madonna songs over a megaphone.

And yet, morally, there's something more than a little icky about the site, and others like it, such as TapThatGuy and Hot Guys Reading Books (I swear I'm not making those up). While it's 'fine' to take snaps of whoever and whatever you want in public, uploading them to a site for them to be leered over by a bunch of internet strangers takes things on to a new level. And don't forget, their features are clearly visible; these aren't random faces in the crowd.

The subjects of these photos are easily identifiable. Sure, we have all sat opposite someone beautiful on public transport and allowed our minds to wander, but to take a photo? What are you going to do with that photo later? Would you be comfortable with the subject of your snap knowing what you were up to?

Tubecrush is very quick with the disclaimers, acknowledging that "some people may not like their picture being shared on our site" and stating their belief the blog is "an artistic expression of our appreciation of the human body, and as such, we believe we are legally entitled to publish these photos".

They also say that should anyone object to their picture being on the site, they'll take it down. But it's already been up there in full view. Of course, the ultimate get-out clause is that Tubecrush and sites like it appeal to our vain side, plus most of them are smart enough to feature only men. We are 'fortunate' to live in a world so 'equal' that taking pictures of women on public transport without their permission would be creepy and exploitative.

This, however, isn't an upskirt candid of a girl on the Tube, it's a guy with big muscles and tight jeans! It's not your fault he's hot, right? He's practically asking for it, getting on the tube looking all fine. Apply those same statements to a woman. Oh.

But it isn't just the impossibly hot who get the attention of the amareur paparazzo. The liberation of the internet has meant that the crazy, oddly dressed loner no longer has an audience of a heap of cats or whoever he or she meets in the supermarket. Ugly people on dating sites or apps need worry no more about their limited appeal.

There's a hungry, baying crowd out there who can't wait to see them in all their glory on sites like People of Walmart and Late Night Mistakes. There are no pretensions of 'appreciation of the human body' here; it's mean-spirited entertainment in its purest form. From the woman who does her shopping like one of Jack the Ripper's victim to the guy passed out in the street, drunk and hugging a dog, there are enough 15-second segments of fame out there for everyone, as long as you don't quite fit into the very slender field of social norms defined by these David Baileys of the internet. The only trouble is, most of these nanocelebrities never even get to bask in their glory. Like all the best mocking, it's being done firmly behind their backs.

The arguments for this strand of snap-taking are pretty easy to predict. "It's just a bit of fun", "they'll never see it", "it's a compliment if someone thinks you're hot enough to take a photo", or maybe, in the words of the editor of French Closer, the magazine currently splashing Kate Middleton's breasts across Europe "they're not degrading... they're not in the least shocking". Sure, sure. So far, so flimsy, and the law would agree with you. But as a moral defence, taking into account a person's feelings or security, it wouldn't stand up in the weakest of breezes.

Imagine instead, then, getting an email from a friend who's spotted you on such a site, or sitting on the train and looking up from your book to see a total stranger taking your photo. Or maybe doing the same to your mother or brother, and posting it to a site either to be drooled over, or ridiculed.

Yes, let's turn that lens on you and yours and zoom in tight. Still feeling snap happy?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1870364 2012-09-10T19:00:00-04:00 2012-11-10T05:12:01-05:00

Justin Myers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-myers/
The Olympics were a wonderful spectacle, a once in a lifetime extravaganza which brought together nations, not to mention Londoners. A modern-day blitz, if you like, without the bomb craters. The effect of the Olympics was extraordinary. But we were punch drunk on pomp and spectacle. We were caught up in the fabulous moment, and enjoyed it with gusto.

Cynicism and reserve - two qualities the British are usually lauded for - were put on hold for a short while, shoved to the back of the broom cupboard like naughty stepchildren and told to keep quiet until the festivities were over. And perhaps that was a good thing.

There was a certain mob mentality when it came to the Games. In the run-up to the opening ceremony on 27 July, Olympic naysayers and enthusiasts were in equal numbers, usually both at extreme ends of the scale. There was no room for ambivalence or indifference: you either had to love it or hate it. Facebook timelines became filled with cries of "Sod the Olympics" or "If I see anyone slagging off the Olympics or being unpatriotic I'm going to punch them". Each and every one a devastating suicide note to common sense.

Yet as Jerusalem rang out in the first few minutes of the ceremony, naysayers seemed to shrink into the background, joining the stiff upper lip in among the winter coats and Christmas decorations and other things we didn't want to see right now, thank you very much. And, for their part, the majority of zealots cooled their rage and attitudes became more inclusive. We loved everything: the stadium, the athletes, the events. Everything. All of it. And quite right too. No amount of sponsorship scandals or people barking at us which way to walk could dampen our ardour for the Games, and nor should it have.

Now that we've felt this buzz, this surge of positivity, we want more. Like a drug that's kept us going all summer, many are keen to keep the feeling alive - to get one more hit before winter kicks in, as if 'going back to normal' involved skulking back to Dickensian London for a bowl of gruel for dinner in place of a heavily sponsored, Olympic-endorsed burger and fries. Like a lover has just given them their marching orders, Olympic thrillseekers sit, lank-haired and staring into space, shovelling ice cream into their faces and wondering how they can ever taste that high again. Did we really have nothing to look forward to before the Olympics came along and sprinkled fairy dust over everything? Is Olympic hysteria as good as it's going to get?

"We should learn to smile more," say the social commentators. "Let's be nicer to each other!" they cry, as if pre-Olympic London had been a labyrinth of mean streets with a murder on every corner. "We should realise the value of volunteering," says another, but while this is an important part of the legacy, volunteer roles to be involved in the Games were hugely over-subscribed; perhaps we grasped that value already. Previous attempts by the government and its predecessors to highlight volunteering have failed due to lacklustre campaigns and, it may be that some of the volunteering opportunities are, sadly, not as desirable as being involved in the world's biggest sport event.

The Olympics, apparently, has had the fortunate side effect of making us more human. But we didn't need fixing. We weren't devoid of compassion or community spirit; we were just looking for a way to show it. As inspirational, magical and exciting as the Olympic and Paralympic games have been, we mustn't be afraid of reality or returning to normal.

As the comedown kicks in, the end of London 2012 and our return to 'business as usual' needn't mean that we've learned nothing from our Olympic experience. We don't have to be miserable that we're no longer an Olympic city. Euphoric highs don't begin and end with five rings. We have a lot to celebrate, having pulled off the Games in the midst of a worldwide recession and welcoming the world with open arms. But the Olympics didn't create our bonhomie out of nowhere; it was already in place. Without it, the Games wouldn't have been half the success. While positivity and empathy are admirable traits, our sense of snark and gallows humour are also a huge part of who we are. We love a good old moan and to roll our eyes at the ridiculous. We have been willingly engulfed in an Olympic-sized wave of good feeling for the last few weeks and have been on our best behaviour. Now, let's get back being our razor-sharp selves.

London always knew how to smile; you just had to press the right buttons. While it may have been nice to have a cynicism-free summer, I'm looking forward to its return. We can find joy in it if we look hard enough. It's who we are.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1866691 2012-09-09T19:00:00-04:00 2012-11-09T05:12:01-05:00

Justin Myers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-myers/
Thanks to every publication from supermarket checkout pulp to highbrow broadsheet, you know the drill: on their way to a pre-Grammys party in LA, the two started to argue and Brown unleashed an assault on his girlfriend, punching her and attacking her with his car keys. Rihanna was left cut and badly bruised; Brown was sentenced to community service and domestic violence counselling, along with five years' probation. Brown made a muted public apology, but in subsequent interviews has in turns claimed not to remember the incident or merely thrown tantrums to avoid talking about it.

Rihanna's immediate response was to channel her energies into creating her Rated R album with a spikier, more mature sound. Revenge was a dish best served from the top of the charts.

And so the world continued, safe and secure in the straightforward world where bad guy = Brown and good guy = Rihanna.

Lately, however, there has been a distinct change in temperature toward the two. Despite a series of Twitter tirades decrying his 'haters' - without whom he probably wouldn't achieve even a third of the column inches he's enjoyed - Brown is selling records again, his controversial appearance and subsequent haul of awards at the Grammys in early 2012 cementing his comeback. His fanbase acts like the brutal attack in the car never happened.

Rihanna has begun to attract criticism for resuming contact with pugnacious ex, inviting him to appear on a remix of one of her album tracks, Birthday Cake. The reaction of the media was one of horror. Like watching the heroine in a slasher movie check out that strange noise coming from upstairs, it watched, powerless, as Rihanna seemingly stumbled back into the R&B bad boy's affections. While she has not openly condemned him before, this act seemed like some kind of validation of his behaviour. Rihanna's previous silence on the subject made us feel better. Even if she wasn't explicitly saying it, her silence suggested she was angry, an emotion we could understand. We'd be angry too, and we wouldn't forgive - at least that's what we told ourselves. Yet we forgive people all the time. Who's to say we wouldn't forgive someone who beat us up? The idea may seem shocking, but it isn't at all unusual - plenty of victims of domestic violence 'forgive' their aggressor, and many of those go on to reunite and give things another go, whether friends or family like it or not.

And so the next phase of the aftermath of the attack finally began, just as it had been threatening to do ever since the very early rumours that the pair had met up in secret: it was time to blame the victim.

Commentators rounded on Rihanna, labelling her an idiot and warning her if she were to reconcile with Brown, he would only hit her again, despite there being no evidence the relationship was back on.

As if the duet wasn't hard enough to swallow, in a recent interview with the one-woman, pastel-trousered confessional booth Oprah Winfrey, the singer went one further. She acknowledged she'd been alarmed by the public's anger toward Brown, that she considered his actions were a cry for help and, tellingly, she admitted, "We love each other and probably always will".

Rihanna's refusal to play ball and remain hostile toward Brown has opened her up to criticism, some from fellow celebrities. Sure, they wanted an outpouring of emotion, to see her broken and resentful. But to admit she still loved him? Unthinkable! Her detractors conveniently forget the way love and emotion works. At the end of an affair, feelings and passion don't admit defeat, clear their desk and leave without fuss; they claw their way out, refusing to go, hanging on for dear life. They leave marks.

Rihanna was ready to move on, and the wider world simply couldn't understand it - for them the police pictures of the star's bruised, swollen face were still fresh, her life a series of captions in magazines, forgetting they had not lived the day-to-day recovery Rihanna herself had no choice but to go through. Her actions confused and disappointed her supporters; they felt let down.

Rihanna's wistful revelation poses a problem. She may be trying to put the issue to bed, but 'we' are still angry with Brown. He doesn't seem to care that much about what happened, is still shifting albums all over the place and no amount of pithy, no-star album reviews or character assassinations have dimmed his celebrity.

Does Rihanna have a responsibility to stay angry? She didn't ask to be attacked, and she certainly hasn't encouraged the public to be outraged on her behalf. She has become an unwilling poster girl for domestic violence, an obligation thrust upon her because of her fame.

Chris Brown, of course, appears unworthy of Rihanna's forgiveness; he didn't even have to beg for it. If he had shown more humility and maturity, Rihanna's nostalgic outpourings might be easier to stomach. Isn't her reaction and subsequent mournful account of the end of the relationship more honest? Is she supposed to play to the gallery, say she hates Brown, that she'll never forgive him and that she doesn't care what happens to him? We can condemn the violent act, but we can't expect Rihanna to continue being the victim, even if the thought of her being on friendly terms with Brown makes us bilious. The irony, of course, is that Rihanna is slated for her forgiveness, yet we cheer when Brown is injured in a nightclub fight, at first rumoured to be in retaliation for the attack on Rihanna, but later downplayed.

So while Chris Brown enjoys his place back at the banqueting table of R&B megastars, Rihanna is faced with a conundrum: stay angry, like the public want; or be more human, fallible. Fury may satisfy the public's bloodlust, but it wouldn't be of much use to her.

Rihanna and Brown still get asked about the fight in interviews, three years on, because the public aren't satisfied; it still feels unresolved to the casual observer. Rihanna isn't vengeful enough; Brown shows no remorse. Rumours circulated that the pair would appear together at the MTV Video Music Awards, but while this failed to materialise, the ex-lovers were caught on camera in a reconciliatory hug after Rihanna crossed the stage to greet Brown while an award was being presented.

Although it may leave a nasty taste in the mouth, perhaps it's time to let them get on with it. Continue to hold Brown to account, yes. Highlight the importance of remorse and rehabilitation, of course. Be angry? That's up to us. But if Rihanna doesn't want any part of it, by prolonging the trauma she is so keen to leave behind, don't we become the bully?]]>