Rihanna is not your mother. She is a woman whose body does not indicate any sign of recent child birth. She is a woman who is single, rich and beautiful and will make decisions as she sees fit. She is not perfect, has not attempted to be, and her decisions indicate she has no plans of being perfect. Why do the media and writers alike take her not so surprising rekindling with Chris Brown as a moment to claim her teachable moment was wasted?

I was not a fan of the melodramatic manner in which Brown broke up with his Vietnamese and Black street wear “model” ex-girlfriend, Karreuche Tran, nor was I a fan of the celebratory manner in which many of the “Chrihanna” enthusiasts reacted to their inevitable end. However, for the years that came after the domestic violence incident between the two, Rihanna and Brown’s relationship has been held on a pedestal that it did not deserve.

These kids were just as inexperienced, young and naïve as the typical one month relationship on Pace campus near you. To Rihanna’s own admission, they lived wild with no boundaries, and with bank accounts like theirs, they have a different set of freedoms the average American cannot relate to.

While I agree that celebrities have to assume some time of accountability over their actions being that they are in the spotlight and are admired by a youthful audience, I think the role of parenting needs to be refocused onto the parents.

If you have no intentions of raising a daughter like Rihanna, then limit the amount of Rihanna consumption your daughter receives. We are raising a generation of children who eat World Star Hip-Hop for breakfast and Mediatakeout.com for lunch. Most of the content on these sites are not intended for the sponge-like minds of youth who are still not able to fully understand right from wrong, and not be subconsciously influenced by the choices of the flawed celebrities they admire.

If adults know and accept this as fact, it is time to stop blaming celebrities for being human. They make mistakes and return to lovers that have no intention of carrying on a serious relationship with them just like your average red-blooded human being. They get tattoos that will soon be featured in editorials titled, ‘What Was I Thinking?’ on a magazine stand in the near future. But in no way does that absolve our responsibilities as clear headed, mature adults to be clear in how we place blame. Our youth are a product of the generation before them that raised them, and what we glorify and allow them to consume with ultimately consume them as well.

I feel Rihanna is a beautiful, carefully industry-crafted rebel with emotions that bellow deeper than we can fathom. They are conveniently hidden in the persona she wishes to exude, but this observation is not one the youth can understand. However, it is our responsibility as a generation raising another to reconstruct their perception of reality, because the Rihanna we see in blogs and music videos is not real. Neither is Chris Brown, and we will never know either of them and should not want to.

Rather than encouraging the celebration of celebrity we should celebrate things of substance. Celebrity is not substance, it is a distraction from our own dismal lives but if we showed as a collective that we are not invested in their lives, our youth would reflect that much needed reality too.