The Good Men Project

The Respectability Politics of Ciara and Russell Wilson’s Relationship

Tim Brown
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Heavy is the burden of rejection that hangs upon men’s shoulders.

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What a time to be alive. It seems in the age of the internet, every mouse click is a tumble down the rabbit hole into Narnia. For instance, every day we wake up wondering what the end game is for the Trump campaign. And daily, it seems to morph into a larger media behemoth that devours our attention even if we don’t want it to.

However, this post is not about politics. Over the past few months, Russell Wilson and Ciara have been dating and recently he proposed to her. This has been a trending topic in subcultures around the country but the collective conscious is more likely to remember Russell Wilson as ‘that guy who plays football’ and Ciara as ‘kind of like Beyoncé’.

Seriously, I never imagined I’d devote so many brain cells to this relationship. It just seemed like regular celebrity tabloid fodder: two relatively famous people who decide to hook up. There is no more mundane American storyline than that. Yet this has been the topic of a lot of discourse because of Russell Wilson’s alleged choir boy persona and Ciara’s “questionable” dating history (I’m using quotes because of the subjectivity in that assessment). This has generated so much buzz that Very Smart Brothas, a very popular weblog, talked about the rationale why folks are yammering. The synopsis? Men are upset that Ciara, a woman with questionable dating history, was able to overcome being considered ‘damaged goods’ (due to her romantic associations with entertainers and her being a single mother), was claimed by all around good guy Russell because women of that ilk don’t deserve love. In fact, much of the discourse surrounding this subject is polarized between that position and casual indifference.

I can understand why someone would come to that conclusion because there’s a fair amount of people who have opined virulently regarding this arrangement, and there’s an emphasis on the perceived acrimony that resonates in their words. However, I think that’s a dismissive viewpoint that caters to the sentiment of certain populations. The deep seeded sentiment is more than just the residual bitterness of failure.

However, consider an alternate explanation: the failure of respectability politics, or the constant moving of the goalposts and realignment of acceptability in society. How does an invisible man become visible? Russell doesn’t look like an entertainer or superstar athlete at first glance. There’s a myriad amount of images of him on the web in regular clothes and a ‘aw shucks’-like demeanor that seems all too regular. That’s where guys probably connect with Russell; he just seems like an average Joe versus other superstar athletes like Tom Brady or Steph Curry. But that’s only one layer of Russell, as other layers include an ideal of alpha-ness that most men cannot attain…the decorated star athlete that always seems to win in the end. Beta Russell doesn’t get Ciara. Alpha Russell is who wins her over.

I think that guys are frustrated by having to follow the cultural script of:

In the end, the fact is that they still ‘fail’. They still have a glass ceiling…their heart’s fancy always out of reach. Even the “damaged goods” that is Ciara wins more than they do. And what’s worse, the universe mocks them at every turn of the way. There’s no sympathy; there’s no kleenex for a man’s tears. No, they’re expected to pack it in and keep moving, only to repeat the process and receive the taunts of an uncaring world. It’s not entitlement as much as if I adhere to the rules of the game, I would like to win, sometimes. Heavy is the burden of rejection that hangs upon men’s shoulders.

So in the end, it’s less about the pairing of Russell and Ciara. After all, there have been other celebrity parings that haven’t incited as much thinkpiece as these two (Serena Williams and Drake), but simply another reaffirmation that there’s no escape from their norm. Or, if there is an escape, it requires transformation into something otherworldly, like in a Disney Movie.

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Photo credit: Getty Images

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