Cardi B will do what she needs to do.Why does it matter to us?
OFFSET, a rapper and member of the group Migos, and Cardi B, an up-and-coming solo artist who got her start on Instagram, have had a highly public relationship. She detoured through a couple of seasons of “Love and Hip Hop” on VH1 and then broke big with her hit single “Bodak Yellow”. They married, had a daughter, Kulture, and seemed destined for fabulous hip-hop coupledom. Offset’s lack of interest in classical definitions of monogamy didn’t bode well for a healthy relationship, but Cardi B swore that she was in love and that they were going to make it work.
Amid a series of leaks about his behaviour on the road came a string of text messages showing that he was attempting to arrange a threesome with his alleged lover and another rapper. Fans quickly took sides, but then Cardi B announced that they were already broken up - and that while she hoped they could continue to co-parent and work together, their marriage was over. Instead of calling him as her husband or ex-husband, she started referring to him as her baby’s father.
Since early December, we’ve been inundated with tweets and videos of rappers exhorting Cardi B to forgive Offset after she announced that they were splitting. This weekend Offset took it to a new level, interrupting her set at the Rolling Loud musical festival to apologise directly and very publicly, a move that some fans found romantic and others deeply disturbing.
Couplesbreakup every day, so why the collective interest in the aftermath of this particular breakup?
The public nature of the relationship and fan culture - our fascination with the most mundane details of celebrity lives - are partly responsible. But this goes deeper, into a conversation about what it means to part ways with a celebrity partner. To admit that you’re unhappy, that the success, the beauty, and even a baby weren’t enough to win him over to fidelity: that’s not a story most fans want to hear.
We love a woman who has everything on paper, and we have high expectations for our female celebs. We either want them to have lived up to a mythical standard of love, or to be the kind of person who cuts ties quickly and cleanly with no pesky reminders that they are real people with careers that mean they will always have some level of contact with their ex. “Why would Beyonce (or anyone) stay with someone who’s cheated?” headlines asked after Jay-Z’s infidelity came to light. After splitting with Chris Brown, who had been physically abusive to her, Rihanna briefly reconnected with him while he was involved with another woman. For this, she was intensely criticised as a “toxic role model” for her young fans.
It’s harder to see that celebrities are real parents raising real children who they will have to co-parent regardless of infidelity or abuse for decades to come (see: extensive coverage of Jennifer Garner driving Ben Affleck to rehab several years after their initial separation).
We make their lives about us and our needs in a way that we do not with male celebrities. We’re quick to write in a “boys will be boys” excuse if we like them, and completely ignore them if we don’t. The focus still seems to be on what Cardi B should do, even though he’s the one that apparently cheated, cast aside his family in favour of a quick thrill. He’s the one who won’t leave her alone, who accosted her at work.
Two days after Offset’s crashed Cardi B’s performance, debate rages about whether the barrage of public apologies is a publicity stunt or a reason to be concerned for Cardi B’s safety. Regardless, we have to ask ourselves why we expect celebrities to have better answers to the relationship problems that can plague any couple. We’ve gotten so invested in what we think they should do, we can’t see how overly invested we are in a relationship that actually exists behind closed doors.
This is a country that claims to prioritize marriage to such an extent that for decades, we balked at extending it to samesex couples. Yet when it comes to celebrities, we clearly don’t value marriage. We treat it like a sporting event, alternating between cheering and booing participants as the mood strikes us while we avoid any meaningful conversations about why so many marriages end in divorce. It doesn’t matter what any of us think Cardi B should do. She has to make her own choices based on her needs, and not what we want to see for our own entertainment.