After nine months, Rihanna is finally addressing the Chris Brown incident in something other than cryptic baseball metaphors. The pop star -- who's promoting her upcoming album, Rated R -- is on a press blitz, landing the cover of the new issue of Glamour and appearing in two extended interviews for ABC (one on Good Morning America on Thursday and another on 20/20 the next day).
And she hasn't seemed to have put a gag on any questions about the February incident that left her bloody and battered to unconsciousness at the hands of her ex.
"This happened to me. ... It can happen to anyone," the pop star told Diane Sawyer in her GMA interview.
Some more illustrative quotes have come out of her Glamour cover story today, as the singer elaborates that the assault and the drama that followed, "taught me so much."
"I went to sleep as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears," she told the magazine, referring to more than a predilection for bad dye jobs and Cheetos. "That was the level of media chaos that happened the next day. It was like, 'What, there are helicopters circling my house? There are 100 people in my cul-de-sac? What do you mean, I can't go back home?'"
Rihanna, who says she turned to her mom for support during the aftermath following the assault, says the leaked police photos of her swollen and bloody face left her extremely humiliated.
"That is not a photo you would show to anybody," she said. "I felt completely taken advantage of ... like people were making it into a fun topic ... and it's my life. I was disappointed, especially when I found out the photo [was supposedly leaked by] two women."
However, she seems to have taken something positive from the fact she became a very public face of domestic abuse.
"Domestic violence is a big secret," she told the magazine. "My story was broadcast all over the world for people to see, and they have followed every step of my recovery. The positive thing that has come out of my situation is that people can learn from that."
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