By Esther Armah

“Yo! Check this out! Rihanna all battered, dayam! She look like Tina musta did!.”

A group of teenagers are crowded around a computer in the New York Public Library, clamoring to get a look at the newly-released photo of music superstar Rhianna, her face bruised and swollen from a beating, allegedly by her beau, equally famous music sensation Chris Brown.

One boy points at her image, sharing his rapid-fire interpretations. Another laughs. Others stare harder, scrutinizing Rhianna’s injuries. Some are quiet, shocked at the picture, focusing on Barbadian-born (Bajan) beauty Rhianna bruised, battered and busted up. This is the picture that travelled the globe, followed by an affidavit that colored in details from Brown’s alleged assault..

As the teens grow raucous and rowdy, the librarian hushes them. They lower their voices, throwing blame for the beating around like a ragdoll. Some blame Rihanna. Two question Chris Brown. Words like “forgiveness,” “money,” “light-skinned beauty,” and “provocation” are slung, momentarily explored, discarded. They go quiet. The teenager who found the image on the computer shouts: “They like the new Ike and Tina?!”

Chris Brown and Rhianna

Really? Does Chris Brown = Ike? Might Rihanna = Tina? Tina Turner? Living legend, she of “Proud Mary”, and “Nutbush City Limits” fame. She who endured violence at the hands of Ike throughout their 16-year marriage. And Ike?  He of flashy clothes, musical vision, fierce musical independence and creativity; of voracious cocaine use and legendary temper fame? He who ended up in and out of jail. Both brought to life courtesy of Oscar-worthy performances by Angela Bassett and Lawrence Fishburne in the  1993 film,  ’What’s Love Got To Do With It?’

How frightening that Rihanna at just 21, might be dooming herself what Tina lived through: a relationship marked by nearly two decades of cycles of violence. The details of what Tina went through were laid out via her biography “I, Tina”.

At one point, Tina had had enough. She left after 16 years. She went on. She got strong. She healed. She recovered. She spit in Ike’s eye with each step of her success. And how terrifying that Chris Brown, talented, ambitious, young and still growing might become what Ike remains; the focus of ridicule, self-imploding sad dude, high on stories of has-been glory, continually denying his role in the violence.

Chris has plead not guilty. Ike denied he had ever been as violent as Tina claimed. Both of their denials mirror many men’s reaction when confronted with the accusations of putting hands on women they say they love.

We know Ike and Tina’s story. We’re still learning Chris and Rihanna’s. And that of every other black girl who knows Rihanna’s bruises intimately, who has stared in the mirror at unrecognizable features.

Statistics say that most often a Tina would be dead at the hands of the man who she shared the aisle, vows, a gold band and a bed with – or a Rihanna who shared an intimate space with her alleged abuser.  The number one killer of African-American women ages 15 to 34 is homicide, at the hands of a current or former intimate partner, according to the American Bar Association’s Commission on Domestic Violence.

The same study showed Black females experience intimate partner violence at a rate 35 percent higher than that of white females, and about 22 times the rate of women of other races. Every number is a personal tale, a truth hidden, bruises covered, pain buried. A new report Black Girls in New York City; Untold Strength and Resilience, by the Black Women for Black Girls Giving Circle (BWBG), a funding initiative of The Twenty-First Century Foundation and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) revealed violence remained a major fear for young black girls  – and that they expected to have to protect themselves.

To the teenagers in that library, I wonder what Ike and Tina represent. Their laughter isn’t easy. Or comfortable. But it is there. Their eyes tell a separate truth from their laughter. They check one another’s reactions before offering their own. Their conversation spins and spits at the video vixening of black women. They lament how these young women have been “ized” and “fied” – category-ized, demon-ized, vili-fied, hooch-iefied. I watch too.

Not just these women, but depictions of us right across myriad forms of media. We have become comatose cuties, walking wounded, part of the living dead wrapped in the kind of fly fabulosity that shields external bruises and hides broken hearts and souls – even as popular American culture elevates the broken and celebrates the aristocracy of mediocrity.

Ike and Tina Turner

Back at the library, older women watch the teens, eavesdrop on their discussion. Two generations, mixed responses to the picture of a battered woman on a computer screen. One turns in horror to hear another shrug and ask, “What’s the big deal?” Other women rail against each other. Fast girls, good girls, bad girls, brown girls, light girls – the labels signify whether the speaker feels that the violent treatment was apparently deserved. Smart women, hood chicks, Afrocentric activists, weave on crew, corporate cuties-notions of how women should and shouldn’t behave to avoid being on the receiving end of violence-are too often tempered with  but she shouldn’t of, or she should of, or she should’ve known.

The generations part – each slightly disgusted by the other.

Chris Brown points to a deeper conversation: the one about manhood and masculinity and what that means in America. It reeks of the beginnings on this land of a people for whom the legacy of the lash and the lynching rope have become seamless parts of their relationship with this soil and one another. We are on intimate terms with violence. That experience continues to haunt us via the nightmares of young women whose reaction speaks of their socialization in the acceptance of violence.

What kind of man is he? Thug? Hood? Good Boy Gone Bad? Sexy? The marriage of aggression and manhood is an integral part of patriarchal societies everywhere. Ike was a bad boy, a cocaine user, a man striving to be “in charge” of his woman. To some, perhaps, that equaled “sexy.” To some, that defined Ike as “a real man.”

Prior to the incident, Chris was seen as a sweet boy, a good man, with an anti-gangsta persona coated with the sweetness of R&B. That led some to conclude that he “simply wouldn’t go off like that without dire provocation.”

Another truth? Violent, troubled men are using women’s bodies as battlegrounds where internal wars are waged, their rage is poured,  insecurity is fought, disrespect is mastered, pain is smothered. And then society-us we, you, me, he, she-weighs in with versions and visions of how it happened, whose truth and whose lies linger, whose fault it is, what she should do, how he should act, that he should be forgiven, that she should know better than to provoke, that he was provoked. Judgment, not helpful nor transformational, just paralyzing.

Manhood, masculinity and violence in America and around the world, are so intimately intertwined.  Add to that the protective posture of black folk when it comes to the brothers. They face such vulnerability due to the various assaults by society. So they are protected. Trouble is, the way we protect young black men has been and continues to be via the sacrifice of young women. Add to that the created persona of celebrity, where image is truth, perception is everything. And versions of yourself can be packaged and sold as part of the commoditization that is so much of today’s black music, sometimes genius, sometimes tragic.

Did Tina become genius and Ike tragic? And which story do we want to tell about Chris and Rhianna, about every young woman hiding her bruises, every young man claiming love and using his fists?

Esther Armah is an acclaimed international journalist, author and playwirght who has worked in print, radio and television in the United States, the United Kingdom and Africa. An accomplished public speaker and director of a creative media company, she also hosts the provocative radio show, “Off the Page,” on WBAI 99.5FM in New York City.