Kalliyan Sneed

A time when I learned to like something.

When Chris Brown, the singer, and songwriter, released his debut album, I was in elementary school. I was in love with his music just like any other of my friends in the 3rd grade. His posters were hung all over my bedroom walls and his album played repeatedly in my CD player. At the time, his girlfriend was the pop star Rihanna, which made me despise her despite not knowing her personally. Every time I saw a picture of her in a magazine, I would scratch her face out, and convinced even my siblings to hate her.

My hatred towards Rihanna is connected to the New York article in a sense that, I had no logical reason not to like her and say bad things about her other than her relationship status with Chris Brown. The article states that “As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding."

Although this may not seem like a strong issue, my third grader perspective with feelings about Rihanna did not have any logic to it. I simply did not like her because I told myself that I was the one who was supposed to be with Chris Brown driven by a desire for social status; shared with my fellow eight-year-old friends on socially popular behavior. I was not personally attacked by her, nor did I know her as a person. I did not take the time to map out all of the things Rihanna did to make me dislike her because it was impossible. I had no reliable sources to confirm any reasoning for my hatred towards her.

Later in 2009, Chris Brown beat her badly. When I heard the news it was the first time I didn't cringe when hearing her name. I genuinely cared about Rihanna's feelings and wanted to be there for her just like I wanted as a third grader for Chris Brown to be my “Boyfriend”.

Feeling empathy for her when I heard Chris Brown beat her, I now fell in love and became obsessed with her. I already knew she was beautiful and made good music which was slowly impacting my unreasonable hatred of her. After the incident, I noticed she remained the same if not became better. Her record sales went through the roof and never once fell off due to her experience with Chris Brown. The fact that she remained strong and maintained her social status eventually made me change my mind about her. Finding information about her as an artist and seeing her responses to the situation after being beaten by Chris Brown finally challenged my irrational hatred towards Rihanna as I found real reasons to like her as an artist.