A headline can be a matchstick. This is about who holds the flame and who refuses to be burned by it.
Headlines can be incendiary by design. HOLA! USA certainly knew what it was doing with this one: “Rihanna recruits Elon Musk’s trans daughter, Vivian Wilson, for her Valentine’s Day campaign.” Enough to fluff a few feathers. Enough to set the internet on fire. And, predictably, enough to summon the weaponized commentary we know oh so well.
This is not about bait. It is about posture. And posture tells us everything about who is in control.
As far as my personal views are concerned, we have watched repeatedly how women are publicly disciplined for daring to occupy space with autonomy. When Dr. Carrie Bryant wore the nude-based perception gown to a recent fundraiser, and as her husband Jamal Bryant stated, raised millions for their cause, the trending topic was not the outcome. It was the policing.
Even a minister chose to use derogatory and inflammatory language toward a minister’s First Lady, as if dignity were conditional. The receipts exist. Anyone inclined can look them up.
So when Vivian Wilson becomes the face of a Fenty Valentine moment, I do not read it as provocation for provocation’s sake. I read it as a cultural mirror held up calmly, deliberately in a moment obsessed with outrage but starved of intelligence.
Vivian Wilson, featured in Fenty’s Valentine’s Day campaign presented without spectacle, without apology.
I have been laboring on chapters of the crucible we face with the exhaustive DJT onslaughts the daily assaults on our mental faculties, the relentless erosion of constitutional norms. It is incessant. And then this.
And then this.
A spark of ingenuity. A reminder that power does not always shout. Sometimes it curates. Sometimes it smiles and moves on, leaving the culture to catch up.
