There are interviews and there’s the interview Miranda July, the writer of The First Bad Man, just did with Rihanna for The New York Times. There’s stuff in there you just wouldn’t get anywhere else, from the way Miranda describes the situation – ‘I never told you she was pretty because that’s not what I experienced. My understanding, from the moment she sat down, was that we were in love. We were the most in love any two people had ever been’ – to what Rihanna revealed.
As well as hearing her thoughts on race and how she ‘wants to prove people wrong’ about stereotypes, how she considers herself a ‘next-moment’ person rather than an ‘in-the-moment’ person and how she’d never do what her mum Monica did and send her daughter, aged 15, to another country to become a singer, Rihanna spoke about her vagina fears.
You see, Rihanna Googles childbirth. ‘I was searching the size of certain things, and how much they expand, and then what happens after,’ she said.
Miranda then replied by saying that ‘It’s gonna be fine’ and wanted to add: ‘You have a special body. Nothing you can Google applies to you.’
But later in the conversation, Miranda asked Rihanna: ‘You’re not about to get pregnant are you? The internet will explode when I say you were Googling childbirth.’
Rihanna replied no, but said that she simply had a generalised fear of what happens to a vagina during childbirth. At that point, they started Googling what this fear could be.
‘“Phobia of a big vagina.” ... “Deep.” ... This is awful. I can’t believe I’m typing this in,’ Rihanna says.
To which Miranda replied: ‘Wait. Deep’s not an issue. It’s wide.’
‘Deep is an issue, hello!’ interjected Rihanna: ‘Trust me, if they can’t feel the end, it’s like, Cannonball!’
Miranda drew from this: ‘Cannonball meant sailing into space — into something never-ending, like the cosmos. Men like to know that there is an end to the woman they’re with, that she’s finite.’
We draw from this? That if Rihanna is so concerned about the depth of her vagina, she might do well to pick an incredibly short man to have babies with.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
Pictures: Marc Piasecki, Craig McDean/T: The New Times Style Magazine, Todd Williamson.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.