Magazine Apologizes For Calling Rihanna the N-Word: Should She Accept It?
Rihanna is without a doubt one of the biggest celebrities and fashion icons of today. With her adventurous (and sometimes racy!) sense of style, many consider her to be a trendsetting fashionista. One Dutch magazine, however, has decided that RiRi’s fashion sense isn’t up to par and wrote a piece on it… and somehow managed to call her the N-word while doing so!
Jackie magazine, a Dutch fashion publication, ran an article on how to get Rihanna’s look, avoiding a look that was deemed “too trashy” for the mag. The translated portion of the article read like this:
“Rihanna, the good girl gone bad, is the ultimate ni—bitch and displays that gladly, and for her that means: what’s on can come off. If that means she’ll be on stage half naked, then so be it. But Dutch winters aren’t like Jamaican ones, so pick a clothing style in which your daughter can resist minus ten.”
First of all, n-word b-word? Yikes! And secondly, Rihanna is from Barbados… NOT Jamaica. So many wrong moves!
Jackie‘s editor-in-chief Eva Hoeke realized this faux pas and issued the following statement on the magazine’s Facebook page:
“Dear readers,
First: thanks for all your responses. We are of course very fed up over this and especially veryshocked. However I’m glad that we’re engaging in a dialogue on this page — not everybody doesthat. Thanks for this. Other than that I can be brief about this: this should have never happened.Period. While the author meant no harm — the title of the article was intended as a joke — it was abad joke, to say the least. And that slipped through my, the editor-in-chief’s, fingers. Stupid, painfuland sucks for all concerned. The author has been addressed on it, and now I can only ensure thatthese terms will no longer end up in the magazine. Furthermore I hope that you all believe therewas absolutely no racist motive behind the choice of words. It was stupid, it was naive to think thatthis was an acceptable form of slang — you hear it all the time on tv and radio, then your idea ofwhat is normal apparently shifts — but it was especially misguided: there was no malice behind it.We make our magazine with love, energy and enthusiasm, and it can sometimes happen thatsomeone is out of line. And then you can only do one thing: apologize. And hope that others wish toaccept it.
From the bottom of my heart I say it again: we never intended to offend anyone. And I mean that.
Regards,
Eva Hoeke”
Do you think Rihanna should accept their apology? What do you think of the situation? If you were in Rihanna’s shoes, how would you react?
