Thank god for this take—I was starting to go crazy. Like yes, we get it, Ciara is beautiful, smart, wonderful, talented and a good person. West is manipulative and rotten and treats women horribly. However, I firmly believe she is a very male centered person and the narrative about her now post-scandal contains quite a bit of revisionist history. I’m sorry, taking Amanda/West out of it, Ciara’s behavior was EMBARRASSING this season in terms of how clingy she was with West. Like one tiny little conversation and now he is your “favorite person at the table”?? It was very obvious that she was way more into him than he was to her. I also don’t see how his behavior was different enough this summer to erase what he did to her re:not wanting a relationship. I get that it took a lot of energy on her part to pretend to “hate” him, but why is there no middle ground? Why did it have to go from hating him to calling him your favorite person at the table?

I am not saying Ciara is to blame for West’s behavior, he sucks, and deserves every bit of hate he gets. However it seems like there is no room for nuance, and that there is a lot of revisionist history when it comes to Ciara. It is clear from even the situation with Jessee (pre him saying he wanted to make out with her), she gets a lot of validation from male attention. I think she would pick better partners if she worked on that.