Rihanna's First ‘Vanity Fair’ is So Juicy: Groceries, Chris Brown, Sex, Rachel Dolezal & More
The November cover of Vanity Fair featuring Rihanna in Cuba. Photography by Annie Leibovitz
For Vanity Fair’s November issue, Robyn Rihanna Fenty traveled to newly-opened Cuba to explore fashion’s favorite island with Annie Leibovitz. She posed in a head-to-toe red ensemble in front of a 1956 Lincoln Continental Mark II on the city streets of Havana, splayed out in a gold sequin slip dress on an antique desk inside the decaying Josie Alonso House, and stripped off her clothes to bare her butt in one of the bedrooms. Not only did Rihanna take it all off, she also opened up, revealing her thoughts on Chris Brown and Rachel Dolezal, her favorite TV shows, men these days, dating, sex, and so much more.
Her favorite restaurant in Los Angeles is Giorgio Baldi and she’s really good at ordering (she had three half-portions of spaghetti pomodoro with basil, gnocchi, and ravioli). “Legit, I have been in the gym every day this week because I am not willing to give up my food. But I will sacrifice an hour for the gym.”
@badgalriri is actually kind of boring: “Honestly, I’ve been thinking lately about how boring I am,” she said. “When I do get time to myself, I watch TV.” Her favorite shows are Breaking Bad, Bates Motel, The First 48, and Snapped.
Her last real, official boyfriend was Chris Brown when they got back together three years after he assaulted her. She thought she could be his “guardian angel” and change him. “You want the best for them, but if you remind them of their failures, or if you remind them of bad moments in their life, or even if you say I’m willing to put up with something, they think less of you—because they know you don’t deserve what they’re going to give,” she admitted. “I don’t hate him. I will care about him until the day I die. We’re not friends, but it’s not like we’re enemies. We don’t have much of a relationship now.”
She doesn’t have sex for fun. “If I wanted to I would completely do that,” she said. “I am going to do what makes me feel happy, what I feel like doing. But that would be empty for me; that to me is a hollow move. I would wake up the next day feeling like shit.
She thinks men are afraid of being men. “They think being a real man is actually being a pu***, that if you take a chair out for a lady, or you’re nice or even affectionate to your girl in front of your boys, you’re less of a man. It’s so sick. They won’t be a gentleman because that makes them appear soft. That’s what we’re dealing with now, a hundred percent, and girls are settling for that, but I won’t. I will wait forever if I have to … but that’s O.K. You have to be screwed over enough times to know, but now I’m hoping for more than these guys can actually give.”
She really likes saying “one hundred percent.” Quoted five times repeating the phrase.
She gets horny, she’s human, she’s a woman, she wants to have sex. “But what am I going to do — just find the first random cute dude that I think is going to be a great ride for the night and then tomorrow I wake up feeling empty and hollow? He has a great story and I’m like … what am I doing? I can’t do it to myself. I cannot. It has a little bit to do with fame and a lot to do with the woman that I am. And that saves me.”
She doesn’t want to be a poster child for domestic abuse forever. “A lot of women, a lot of young girls, are still going through it. A lot of young boys too. It’s not a subject to sweep under the rug, so I can’t just dismiss it like it wasn’t anything, or I don’t take it seriously. But, for me, and anyone who’s been a victim of domestic abuse, nobody wants to even remember it. Nobody even wants to admit it.”
She thinks Eminem is one of the most talented poets of our time. “He’s one of my favorite people. He’s got so many layers and he’s such a good person—focused, disciplined. I mean you can’t tell me that you have to be in the club when Eminem is legit at home and being a good father and is still one of the most prestigious rappers of our generation.”
Rihanna believes Rachel Dolezal, the Caucasian N.A.A.C.P. chapter president who pretended to be African-American for years, is a hero — seriously. “I think she was a bit of a hero, because she kind of flipped on society a little bit. Is it such a horrible thing that she pretended to be black? Black is a great thing, and I think she legit changed people’s perspective a bit and woke people up.”
She turned bedrooms in her Los Angeles home into closets. Including the naked dress that started it all that she wore to the CFDA’s. “I wanted to wear something that looked like it was floating on me,” she recalls. “But after that, I thought, O.K., we can’t do this again for a while. No nipples, no sexy shit, or it’s going to be like a gimmick. That night [at the C.F.D.A. awards] was like a last hurrah; I decided to take a little break from that and wear clothes.”
She dreams about buying her own groceries. “Swear to God. Because it is something that is real and normal. Something that can keep you a little bit uncomfortable.”
