Sweet, sweet Rihanna. She started out just like Britney Spears, a wholesome young starlet destined for big things.
But now, increasingly, her performances and actions are being branded “lewd” and “offensive”.
The most recent Ri-Ri bashing in the press today followed her appearance on her Loud tour at the 02 Arena in London wearing something less than a full-length smock.
Or, as the Daily Mail described it… Rihanna “initially arrived wearing a bottom-skimming blue jacket but quickly stripped down to a barely-there jewelled bikini, nude fishnets and neon platform boots”.
Just last week the Bajan singer was told to cover up by an Irish farmer, who suggested she acquaint herself with a “greater god”, after she wore a red bikini for her latest music video, filmed in his field.
One columnist in The Telegraph newspaper used it as an opportunity to write: “It’s not enough to be tough on sluttiness, we must be tough on the causes of sluttiness.”
Is this sluttiness? Or is this a young woman expressing herself? And is it so threatening that we need to somehow stop her wearing a bikini?
Sex sells and Rihanna knows it, and more importantly – so does her management, but is she damaging pop music and her youthful audience’s minds?
Former Spice Girl Mel C thinks so, weighing in on the debate she told the Daily Mirror: “"Rihanna has responsibility and although culture's always changing, it's changed too much. It needs to be dealt with."
So what happened to change Rihanna from that doe-eyed girl from the Island who sang about dancing and high-school crushes, to the fishnet-clad temptress who claims “chains and whips” excite her?
After moving from her home town of St Michael in Barbados at the age of 16, Rihanna auditioned for former Def Jam record label head Jay Z, who reportedly told her, "There are only two ways out. Out the door after you sign this deal. Or through this window."
No one can blame Rihanna for signing that record deal. It’s subsequently made her an internationally renowned pop star who, at the age of 23, has dozens of Billboard, Brit, MTV and Mobo awards under her studded leather belt.
As her fame and achievements have rocketed, her image has changed and the criticism has increased.
It is hard to quantify how far this change has been influenced by the trauma of her former relationship with R&B singer Chris Brown.
This destructive union culminated in an early morning argument inside a rented Lamborghini on a Hollywood street in February 2009, which saw Brown arrested and charged with assault.
Since a shocking photo showing welts on Rihanna's forehead above each of her eyebrows, marks on her cheek and bleeding around her lips was leaked to the press, she has done everything in her power to erase that image of her as a victim. This has included dramatic haircuts and an altogether more sultry appearance.
Rihanna has released two more albums since the assault – Rated R and most recently, Loud. Both include songs with far more provocative lyrics than her former records.
If any more explanation is needed to explain Rihanna's rebellious ways, the singer has previously said that life with her parents, Monica Braithwaite and Ronald Fenty, a former crack addict, forced her to grow up early. She revealed, “I saw too much. I was way too mature for my age.”
Critics' concern over Rihanna’s risqué image and the effect it might have on her young fans first came to a head in the UK last year, when she thrusted her way through a performance on the (pre-watershed)X Factor, in a high-fashion version of pants and a strapless bra.
This year she’s been warned to cover up if she appears on the X Factor again, following thousands of complaints over her skimpy outfits and the TV watchdog, Ofcom, announcing stringent new guidelines for pre-watershed programmes.
This kind of controversy is nothing new. For example, the frenzy conjures up thoughts of the furore over Elvis Presley in the fifties and sixties. In 1957, Ed Sullivan's producers decided that their cameras would only shoot him from the waist up, as they considered his hip-swinging to be too suggestive. Isn’t this, in essence, what Ofcom are doing to Rihanna now?
Her sex-pot image may have been produced and marketed by a greedy record-label who know their star will make more hits and front pages scantily clad. But it’s also worth considering the role Rihanna herself has to play in her image, after all, she recently told Rolling Stone: “I love feeling like I'm somebody's girl... I love to be tied up and spanked.”
Is the world turning into an amoral , overly promiscuous, sex-obsessed abyss because of Rihanna's outfits and dance-routines? Well no, probably no more than it already is. In reality, she’s not innocent and she’s not a teen anymore, thus her image and music reflects that. But do you think she needs to tone it down? Take a look at the photos below and let us know.
SLIDESHOW: Rihanna then and now...
