Kehlani performs at the MTV Woodies/10 for ’16 taping during the South by Southwest Music Festival on Wednesday, March 16, 2016, in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP)
For days, a segment of the Internet has been consumed with R&B singer Kehlani’s love life, harshly criticizing her amid speculation that she cheated on Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving with her ex-boyfriend.
Back in February, Kehlani had posted on Instagram that she was dating Irving. On Monday morning, rapper PartyNextDoor shared a photo that showed him holding Kehlani’s very recognizable tattooed hand while in bed. The pair used to date.
“After all her shenanigans, still got the r&b singer back in my bed,” PartyNextDoor wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post.
Twitter went nuts and went after Kehlani, even though there wasn’t anything there to confirm that she was still dating Irving.
Later that day, the Grammy-nominated Oakland singer posted an Instagram photo of her lying in a hospital bed with an IV attached to her arm.
“Today I wanted to leave this earth,” she wrote in a post. “Being completely selfish for once. Never thought I’d get to such a low point.”
She continued: “But… Don’t believe the blogs you read.. No one was cheated on and I’m not a bad person.” Kehlani ended her very public admission of attempted suicide by bidding goodbye to Instagram. She has since deleted all of her posts.
Now singer Chris Brown has decided to weigh in… for some reason. You know, Chris Brown, the singer who has been a suspect in numerous assault cases. The man who pleaded guilty in 2009 to assaulting his then-girlfriend, Rihanna.
As you can imagine, Brown — who alluded to Kehlani in a series of tweets early Wednesday — didn’t exactly elevate the conversation around Internet bullying, slut-shaming and mental health.
“There is no attempting suicide,” he tweeted. “Stop flexing for the gram. Doing s— for sympathy so them comments under your pics don’t look so bad.”
Oof.
He also tweeted “#KYRIEMVP.”
That Kehlani became the subject of intense social-media attacks while the man who helped fuel those rumors, PartyNextDoor, went unscathed — after her attempted suicide, Kehlani thanked him for “saving my life” — underscores the disparate ways famous men and women are treated by the public.
Further underscoring those different standards: the way the public reacted to cheating allegations of another basketball-musician couple, Iggy Azalea and her fiance, Los Angeles Lakers’ Nick Young.
Lakers teammate D’Angelo Russell shot a secret video of Young talking about other women. But when the video recently leaked, it wasn’t Young who faced an avalanche of scorn. Instead, some Lakers players distanced themselves from Russell. As a man who outed a fellow guy, Russell became the butt of jokes online.
As for Kehlani, it’s unclear how exactly the criticism of her love life and allegations of cheating affected her, and what led up to the attempt on her life. But she did allude to the drama that played out online in a caption accompanying the photo of her in the hospital.
“Everyone is hurt and everyone is in a place of misunderstanding,” Kehlani wrote on the Instagram. “But as of today, I had no single wish to see tomorrow. But God saved me for a reason, and for that… I must be grateful.”
After she went public with her attempted suicide, many tweeted support under #StayStrongKehlani — along with reminders that while celebrities have their personal lives scrutinized by the masses, they still are very human.
Read more:
What happens when a suicide is highly publicized in the wrong way: The suicide contagion effect
The dangerous psychology of celebrity fat-shaming — and how stars can fight back
