Rihanna is, without a shadow of a doubt, an absolute icon. Not only is she a hugely successful singer, but she’s also a fashion designer, actor, philanthropist, social media queen, founder of the Fenty empire, and successful businesswoman, too.

Best of all, though? RiRi knows all of this – and she’s not afraid to shout about her achievements, either.

Take, for instance, the recent Twitter furore over the upcoming launch of Fenty Skin.

Naturally, Rihanna’s fans were excited to learn that, as of 31 July, their faces will be dripping in Fenty skincare products. Which is unsurprising, really: they’ve been speculating about a Rihanna-approved skincare range for months now.

“I feel Rihanna coming out with some Fenty skin care and it’s gonna shake the beauty community and I’m here for it,” reads one such tweet from January 2019.

How do we know about that tweet, you ask? Because this week, well over a year after it was posted, Rihanna made the spectacular decision to retweet that very same post into her own feed.

“Same, same, and same,” she added.

Why is this such a big deal? And, likewise, why is it such a big deal that Rihanna took the time to fish out several other tweets from as far back as 2017 to retweet into her feed?

Because… well, because, for as long as we can remember, women have been taught to bashfully bat away compliments, talk down their skills and insist they’re far more mediocre than the world gives them credit for. As such, research has repeatedly found that, for women, there’s nothing quite so terrible as being seen as cocky or (dare we say it?) ‘smug’.

Of course, ‘smug’ is just one of many unfair labels we often use to describe women: men can be confident, while women are frequently dismissed as attention-seekers. Men are allowed to know and demand exactly what they want, while women who do the same have historically been dubbed as divas. And men can be the boss, while women are contemptuously described as bossy.

So, yeah, it’s a really big fucking deal when a woman in the spotlight – a woman as beloved and revered as Rihanna – decides to change the narrative like this. Because she’s not just accepting compliments, she’s owning them. In fact, strike that: she’s not just owning them. By retweeting them into her public feed, she’s taking control of the conversation around her and her many, many accomplishments. She’s making sure all of that positive feedback is included in her own brilliant story. And she’s leaning hard into her success, too.

It’s all too easy to dismiss this move as just another retweet, but it’s actually a shining example of self-assuredness. And, while the rest of us don’t have age-old tweets from fans we can pin to our social media feeds (probably), we do owe it to ourselves to make like Rihanna and big up our own accomplishments. After all, if we want to secure a pay rise or land that dream job, simply keeping our heads down and hoping someone notices how brilliant we are is not a proactive strategy.

With that in mind, then, let’s go out into the world and crank up the volume on our achievements as loud as we possibly can.

Or, y’know, be less humble, be more RiRi. Simple.

Images: Getty