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"   When Liz Jones launched a scathing attack on Rihanna in the Daily Mail, we could barely look. If we were going to start a fight with a celebrity, we&amp;#039;d probably choose our target carefully. Victoria Beckham doesn&amp;#039;t look like she&amp;#039;d win in an arm wrestle, for example, and if we got pinned underneath Ryan Reynolds, we wouldn&amp;#039;t complain. It was pretty clear this was one helluva mis-matched fight, with only one woman likely to come out on top. And it wasn&amp;#039;t Liz. Jones argues that Rihanna has a responsibility to her young fans which she&amp;#039;s graphically failing to uphold. Admittedly, her Instagram feed does seem to feature a stream of semi-nudity, piles of money and terrible grammar.  On stage, she has a penchant for wearing just her pants (although she isn&amp;#039;t alone in this one), and she escaped from her abusive relationship with Chris Brown only to scurry back to take lots of photos of the couple grinning at the camera. And yes, whether she likes it or not, Rihanna is a role model to millions of young women. In an ideal world she&amp;#039;d use her enormous fame and influence to tread the same super-awesome path Adele struts down with such dignified, bee-hived aplomb. Or at least, choose to keep the photos of foot-long spliffs and gun tattoos to herself. But coming from a background of physical abuse (her drug addict father was violent towards her mother), Rihanna has lacked her own strong role models. On top of which, she&amp;#039;s having to deal with the enormous pressures that being a record-breaking superstar bring. As she points out in her Tweeted response to Liz&amp;#039;s article, &amp;quot;&amp;#039;Role Model&amp;#039; isn&amp;#039;t a position or title that I have ever campaigned for.&amp;quot; Ultimately, she&amp;#039;s a 25-year-old woman with the right to live her life whichever way she wants to, even if some of us would rather she chose differently.  And then we come to the ultimate irony of Liz&amp;#039;s article: she doesn&amp;#039;t seem to have twigged that, with millions of women reading her weekly columns in the Mail on Sunday and You magazine, and regular features in the Daily Mail, she too is a role model. Here&amp;#039;s a sample of quotes taken from her articles:  &amp;quot;Young women mew and stick out their chests, while men respond by leering and touching. I doubt the latter happens without the former...I can&amp;#039;t stand women who flirt far more than I dislike gropers.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I detest working mothers who spend all day slumped at their desk, eating and complaining about the cost of childcare.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Because [my boyfriend] wouldn&amp;#039;t give me what I wanted, I decided to steal it from him. I resolved to steal his sperm from him in the middle of the night.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I am in fact secretly proud that I&amp;#039;m still a size 8, a sample size. I love my concave stomach and I can&amp;#039;t help, despite my beliefs, but regard women who are fat, who don&amp;#039;t exercise, who gorge on things like Galaxy, as somehow lazy. They just don&amp;#039;t try hard enough.&amp;quot; In the Rihanna article itself, Liz goes even further, perpetuating dangerous rape myths by writing that, &amp;quot;She promotes the sort of fashion sense on stage that surely invites rape at worst, disrespect at least.&amp;quot; Claiming that any woman &amp;#039;invites&amp;#039; rape is the kind of irresponsible nonsense which leads to thousands of women choosing not to report their rape, for fear that they&amp;#039;ll be held accountable.  So if you&amp;#039;re looking to trash a role model, Liz, I suggest you try looking a little bit closer to home. Follow Rosie on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Mullies "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/reports/a20788/liz-jones-rihanna-role-model-fight/>