No more than seconds after the death of celebrated rapper Mac Miller was shared, there were cries of disgust directed towards pop-artist Ariana Grande, his ex-girlfriend. People began to blame her for his death; telling her she was too cruel, that she disregarded his emotions, that she caused him to overdose. They called her names, said she killed a man.
Grande was forced to turn off the comments on her Instagram, posting on a single black and white picture of Mac Miller on her Instagram account, and later a video of him with a caption in tribute to him, expressing her sadness.
A post shared by Ariana Grande (@arianagrande) on Sep 8, 2018 at 2:28pm PDT
A post shared by Ariana Grande (@arianagrande) on Sep 14, 2018 at 12:40pm PDT
When Grande and Miller broke up, in May of 2018, Grande parted with words of support and spoke of him as, “one of my best friends and favorite people on the planet.”
This is the issue that many women have faced and continue to face in our society. They are held accountable for the actions of men.
In May, Grande expressed that her relationship with Miller had become toxic, after an incident involving Miller receiving a DUI and Grande being blamed by fans. She asked for women to be treated with respect and proclaimed: “I am not a babysitter or a mother and no woman should feel that they need to be.”
Everyone has the right to leave a toxic relationship without being regarded as cruel. Grande implied that Miller had not been “able to keep his sh-t together” and that she is not obligated to him because he wrote a song about her.
Had Grande been in his position, would Miller have been regarded as cruel, or she desperate?
In our daily lives, this mindset is blatant among people. When men wreck themselves after a breakup, women are pushed to give them another chance and shamed when they do not do so — even by other women. On the other hand, men are applauded for leaving someone who is clingy, problematic, or desperate. They have “dodged a bullet,” and “got out while they could.”
Women give themselves up to men who ask for help, who need help, and they are often abused until they make the decision to leave. After that, instead of being celebrated, they are sometimes treated with disgust. The arguments made against Grande popularly run along the lines of her leaving him when he “needed her most,” that she was supposed to help him out of his addiction.
How? You cannot cure someone’s mental illness or addiction with love. It is a hopeful concept, but unrealistic. Many of us have tried it.
How many men have impregnated their girlfriends or lovers just to run away from their responsibilities? Ariana Grande is not his mother. She is allowed to flaunt her happiness with her new fiancé. It doesn’t matter if it is “harsh.” It doesn’t give anyone the right to assign blame to her over an action her ex-boyfriend made by himself. Just a couple days after Miller’s death, an article was released revealing how deeply involved Grande was in Mac Miller’s path to recovering from his addiction.
This is the double standard of our forwards-backward society.
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