Robyn Rihanna Fenty (born February 20, 1988), known by her stage name Rihanna is a Barbadian recording artist, actress and fashion designer. She lived the life of a normal island girl going to Combermere, a top sixth form school. Rihanna won numerous beauty pageants and performed Mariah Carey "Hero" in a school talent show. Her life changed forever when one of her friends introduced her to Evan Rodgers, a producer from New York who was in Barbados for a vacation with his wife, who is a native. Rodgers arranged for her to go to New York to meet Jay-Z, CEO of Def Jam Records. He heard her sing and knew she was going to be incredibly successful. She was 16 when she was signed to Def Jam. Since then, she's amassed phenomenal success. After watching Rihanna’s 2013 Grammy performance of her hit song ‘Stay’ it led me to conclude that Rihanna has a Strong personality, an assumption which is based off the application of Evolutionary psychology and Existential psychology concepts. As she sang, the audience could feel her raw emotion, it didn’t feel rehearsed it felt real, which was only suitable since the song can be seen as a representation of the current dilemma she currently faces in her love life with ex lover Chris Brown.
Existential Psychology is the study of human existence, however Rollo May focuses on concepts like freedom, responsibility, Authenticity, Death, courage, anxiety, destiny, dasein , daimonic , etc. All of which can be found in the traces of rihanna’s personality that is made visible to us. It is stated that the most important attribute of humans is freedom of choice. In the words of Sartre “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself, such is the first principle of existentialism” (1957, p.15). Along with this freedom to become whatever type of person we choose, we must assume full responsibility for what we become or what happens to us. So when analysing the decision rihanna made to take back Chris brown after he abused her, was ultimately her choice and she will have to bear the consequences of this decision, be them good or bad.
Because some people may look to rihanna as a role model of young girls, they do not support her decision to get back together with her abuser, the love of her life, Chris brown. But in spite of all that rihanna still continues to rebuild her relationship with him. This is what Rollo May would referred to as Authenticity. If a person exercises their free will to expand consciousness further, to establish values that minimize anxiety and provide positive relationships with fellow humans, and to create the challenges necessary for personal growth, then they are said to be living an authentic life. But if however, a person lives in accordance with someone else’s values and does not exercise his or her free will to enhance personal growth and effective living, the person is said to be living an inauthentic life. [ (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2011) ]. To live an authentic life takes courage, because this life involves taking risk. There was a risk involved when Rihanna decided to go public about her true feelings towards Chris Brown which she did in an interview with the even popular Oprah Winfrey. Moreover existentialist emphasizes Death, to which May declares “to grasp what it means to exist, one needs to grasp the fact that he might not exist”. People die symbolically, by degrees, each time one of their established values is threatened. Such a threat is perceived as an attack on one’s existence and therefore it too causes anxiety. [ (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2011) ]. By making her decision public, rihanna’s music career could’ve suffered or died, which ultimately will result in her feeling anxiety before she did the interview, but in the mist of all that, she found the courage to override this anxiety and go onto living her authentic life.
Rollo May defined Destiny as “the patterns of limits and talents that constitutes the ‘givens’ of life” (1981, p.89), these refer to the things we have no control over like; where we were born, our sex, our parents, skin colour, talents, intelligence etc. Although we had no control over these givens we still have a freedom to choose how we want to use them. For example Rihanna was born in Barbados with the ability to sing and perform, in Barbados it is only thus far a person can reach in the entertainment industry, however she did not let that stop her, she choose to use her talents to the best of her ability and now she is one of the biggest stars in the world. She even said this is one of her songs off her new album. In it she confesses “Mother Mary I swear I wanna change, Mister Jesus I’d love to be your queen, but I’m from the left side of an island, never thought so many people will even know my name.”
In the mist of this one question reoccurs, “What does she see in him?”. This question can be answered by David Buss and his Evolutionary psychology theory, in terms of mate selection. Evolutionist believe that the main goal of human behaviour is too pass on of genes, therefore according to genetic similarity theory, we seek out mates that are genetically similar to us so that if an offspring is produced our gene pool will live on. Chris Brown and Rihanna are the same complexion, they are both good looking and slim built. It is said that women choose their mates on the ability to provide for them and their offspring, as you can see Chris Brown would fall into that category as he has a successful career. Men however view women as sex object and choose their mate on their ability to reproduce, and physical attractiveness. Rihanna was recently crowned the sexiest woman alive by Esquire Magazine, and she is at the top of every man’s wish list.
Let’s retract for a minute to the incident in 2009, when an argument between the couple resulted in rihanna being left bloodied and battered and Chris Brown having to be brought in front a court of law. According to Buss, jealousy is an evolutionary adaptation that protects long term relationships. Buss recognizes that they are occasions when jealousy motivates abuse, violence or even murder but he contends that jealousy evolved as a means of protecting a long term mating arrangement [ (Olson & Hergenhahn, 2011) ]. Women get jealous if they assume their spouse has another emotional attachment to someone else, they see this as a threat to their financial stability, if was alleged that on the night of the incident Rihanna confronted Chris about having relations with another women. Now fast forwarding to 2012 there was another incident in a night club where Chris Brown and Drake as well as their entourages got into a brawl, allegedly over Rihanna, due to the fact that Drake briefly dated rihanna after she broke up with Chris. It is said that men get jealous when they imagine their spouse having sex with someone else, thus is it clear as to why Chris responded the way he did that night in the club.

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