Rihanna – Fashion Maven and Sex Goddess Rolled Up into a Pop Music Diva

carefully managed media image, Rihanna went on to use publicity leaks with more sensuous and teaser personal nude photos that were made available via various social media sources and supposedly herself for the public at large on the world wide web.

          The 2012 GQ Magazine interview gives us this
                 glimpse of RiRi "Onstage, she'll tap out the
                    beat on her pussy and croon lyrics like
                  suck my cockiness, lick my persuasion."

  How much of this is a carefully managed image? GQ's   columnist and interviewer insists that while Lady Gaga      and Kate Perry performances offer a theatrical act,
          Rihanna is the real deal, a mixture of controlled
              wild and weird.  "Those [Gaga, Perry] are one-
                 woman masquerade balls, their real selves
                hidden behind the next costume change.
                Rihanna, on the other hand, comes
               off as wild, weird, unfiltered".

Many of her songs have a vibrant energetic and musically beautiful arrangements that evoke the memory of Samantha Fox 80s dance and club hit Touch Me, which at the time was considered provocative and sexually suggestive while being edgy.

While the media's love affair with Rihanna, sometimes referred to as Ri or RiRi, is in full swing, The Guardian's 2012 piece prefaces with a byline "is her fetish gear a hypersexualised step too far?" The article, by Jess Cartner-Morley, launches its segment by bringing up her 2011 video titled S&M (Sadism & Masochism) another word in the raunchy avant-guarde world of "taboo" sex.

The Guardian goes on to question whether Rihanna is manufactured or the real deal "Eleven countries banned the video. Meanwhile, fans jammed arena switchboards worldwide securing tickets to her tour" Of course, Time Magazine went on to place her on its 100 Most Influential list that same year.

The Guardian article goes further "the dominant

images of Rihanna in the media were her onstage outfits, which were all leather straps, metal studs, fishnets and fierce heels: female sexuality as visual performance."

Iron Maiden and Motley Crüe must be turning in their proverbial graves at the media's roundtable of confections by quota and allocation. Yesterday it was the boys' bands that held metals studs and naked ass peeking through leather pants as male visual performance, today it is the girls at the same stage with the same toys and prop sets.

The UK Guardian wraps up its 2012 piece "When asked about the S&M video … in British Vogue … she [Rihanna] said: 'that's not me. That's a part I play ....' Her fans, however, ardently want to believe that she is 'just being herself' - so that, for the most part, is the message they are given."

It's possible there is an unspoken all-points bulletin issued by the Washington DC-based National Press Club to reporters and editors; when covering Rihanna, guys and gals do bring up the issue of manufactured personna, stage image versus the "real deal".

Is it the music divas that are sounding like a chorus line or is it the press that's lined up like a group of choir boys singing in unison?

Is there anything really special to Ri? Not if you stop and analyze the details and components, it all seemed to have been tried before but perhaps the right crew of talented contributors coalesced around an equally talented and extremely sexy performer and behold, the marketing and media machine was amply stocked and available when her turn came up to walk down the runway.

Her most recent album, Unapologetic, of 2012 resulted in another sizzle interview with GQ Magazine. Slave to fame?!!! Of course not, she is a slave to love, loving her work: "If I didn't like what I was doing, then I would say I was committing slavery. "