6 Thoughts About the Politics of Rihanna’s Pregnancy Reveal
By Stacy Lee Kong
Image: Fenty Beauty
Of all the things I’m still thinking about, six days after Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show performance—her deep, deep catalogue of hits despite not releasing an album since 2016, whether we’ll ever get R9, her marketing prowess, her billionaire status, the inconsistent ethics of her brands—the thing I keep returning to is the way she revealed that she’s pregnant with her second baby, and how that fits into the larger context of Black celebrities who have announced their pregnancies during a performance or work engagement. I’m pretty sure Beyoncé was the first to do it when she revealed she was pregnant with Blue Ivy using a mic-drop moment at the end of her performance of “Love on Top” at the 2011 VMAs. In 2018, Cardi B revealed she was expecting her daughter, Kulture, during her performance of “Be Careful” on SNL. In 2020, Kelly Rowland revealed her pregnancy with son Noah via a cover shoot for Women’s Health magazine. And most recently, Keke Palmer revealed her pregnancy in her SNL opening monologue in December.
On Monday, The Cut’s Erica Schwiegershausen wrote a short piece about Rihanna’s “radical performance of pregnancy,” and that term really struck me, because a) it really was a performance and b) like all performances, this style of pregnancy reveal gives us an opportunity to parse what our society believes about a lot of seemingly unrelated things, like childbearing, yes, but also productivity, race and privacy. In short, pregnant people’s bodies are also politically charged, and it’s worth thinking about why that is. So, here are six way to contextualize Rihanna’s announcement:
Is this type of reveal the natural successor of Lucille Ball’s decision to make her second pregnancy a plot point in I Love Lucy in the ‘50s? I think so!
In the 1952, when Lucille Ball became pregnant with her second child, she did something almost totally unprecedented: she wrote it into her show. At that point, there had only been one other person who appeared on television while expecting: Mary Kay Stearns, whose pregnancy was only turned into a storyline on Mary Kay and Johnny, her sitcom with real-life husband Johnny Stearns, after she unsuccessfully tried to hide it. But the “Lucy is Enceinte” episode of I Love Lucy, which came along four years later, was significantly more high-profile and successful enough with audiences that it ultimately spawned (lol) a whole subset of sitcom pregnancy tropes, from the ubiquitous Lamaze class scene, to panicky dads not knowing what to do during labour, to someone going into labour in the least convenient situation (a natural disaster, while stuck in an elevator, etc. etc.)… which I’m sure would legitimately shock CBS execs at the time, since they were so squirrelly over the prospect of offending viewers that they did not allow Ball to use the word pregnant during the episode, hence the use of the French term for pregnancy in its title.
This moment in TV history doesn’t just remind us of the impact of television pioneers; it also offers an interesting glimpse at a unique point in history. From the Victorian era onward, the very idea of pregnancy was considered ‘vulgar,’ as acknowledging that a baby was gestating necessarily implied that its parents (and especially its mother) had, on at least one occasion, had sex. So, pregnant people were largely relegated to the private sphere. In fact, according to a 2005 article about pregnancy discrimination in the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law, “as late as the 1950s, pregnant women consciously avoided appearing in public places [including work]. In the 1950s and 60s, many employers had mandatory leave policies requiring women to leave work upon reaching a certain month of pregnancy, regardless of whether they were able and willing to continue working… [these policies] were an outgrowth of the Victorian view that it was obscene for a pregnant woman to be seen in public. Having an obviously pregnant woman present in the workplace caused embarrassment and discomfort for other employees… It was not until after the 1952-53 television season, when Lucille Ball appeared on I Love Lucy during her pregnancy, that views began to change.”
I think there’s a real connection between the way Ball’s professional storytelling helped normalize being pregnant in the public sphere and the way Beyoncé, Cardi B, Rowland, Palmer and now Rihanna’s professional performances situate Black women’s pregnancies as normal, exciting and something to be celebrated—which historically has not been the case in white Western culture, both due to the history of forced birthing during slavery, when slave owners relied on Black women's ability to give birth to increase the population of enslaved people, and modern policies that devalue Black mothers and stigmatize Black motherhood.
When Black women announce their pregnancies publicly, it’s a deliberate reclamation of Black joy
In fact, let’s go a bit deeper on that idea of celebration.
Remember when Beyoncé announced her second pregnancy with twins Rumi and Sir via an internet-breaking Instagram post that was heavy with religious iconography? As British academic Katie Edwards wrote in The Conversation at the time, in these photos, “Beyoncé doesn’t simply create a powerful and iconic image of Black femininity in her pregnancy announcement images. Images of the Virgin Mary usually depict her fully clothed, including a head covering. The Virgin Mary’s attire must suggest chastity, purity and (sexual and spiritual) virtue. Beyoncé also subverts this ideal by posing in mismatched lingerie, cradling her pregnant belly, and in doing so fuses elements of the ‘Jezebel,’ one of the most prominent stereotypes of Black women, with Virgin Mary imagery. This boldly challenges concepts of ‘acceptable’ female sexuality and racialised stereotypes… [She] simultaneously confronts and undermines the historical racial and sexist stereotypes of the Virgin Mary and Jezebel, and responds to the association between whiteness and purity that remains alive and kicking in Western culture.”
It was both a fascinating exercise in semiotics and a cute post announcing a popular celebrity’s good news. So tell me why so many white women were triggered? I will never not talk about Man Repeller founder Leandra Medine Cohen’s frankly bizarre reaction to Bey’s announcement: a blog post on the site criticizing Beyoncé for being happily pregnant when she herself was struggling with infertility. Strangely, Cohen wasn’t moved to write a similar blog post when any number of white celebrities announced their pregnancies via belly photo. Well, actually, that’s not strange at all, is it? The problem wasn’t that Beyoncé’s announcement was somehow insensitive or over-the-top; it’s that this society largely denies Black women opportunities for joy, ridicules their choices and quite frankly doesn’t believe they are worthy of celebration, especially when it comes to impending motherhood… which is why it is an act of resistance when Black women not only publicly announce their pregnancies, but also frame that message through the lens of joy, love and excitement.
The ambiguity of Rihanna’s reveal highlights a shift in how we speculate about famous people’s pregnancies
All of that being said, as far as celebrity pregnancy announcements go, this one was actually pretty vague—when she began performing on Sunday, Rihanna’s custom Loewe jumpsuit was unzipped enough to show a hint of bump, but she also only gave birth to her first babe (whose name we don’t know, but who we are now referring to as Baby because that’s what family, friends and employees did during interviews for her recent British Vogue cover shoot and story and I think that’s adorable) nine months ago, so while a lot of people were speculating, there were lots of us who were wondering if she maybe hadn’t lost the baby weight yet, you know? Plus, unlike most celebrities who signal their pregnancies using ‘bump hands,’ she only touched her belly once during the show, and then only fleetingly while singing “Diamonds” (during the line, “when you hold me I’m alive/we’re like diamonds in the sky,” which 🥹).
It seemed like most media outlets held their articles about her pregnancy until Rih’s reps confirmed it after the show, and it was interesting to see how that played out on social. In the short span of time between wondering and receiving confirmation, there was a lot of is-she-or-isn’t-she speculation, which prompted some people to decry our collective lack of media literacy, and others to remind everyone that it’s now considered rude to speculate about someone potentially being pregnant. I don’t actually think there was a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to engage with this uncertainty, but I do think it’s fascinating to see how we’ve gone from seeing nothing wrong with tabloids incessantly speculating about the contents of someone’s uterus, to feeling uncomfortable with doing that ourselves, even in the relative privacy of our own homes/Twitter feeds.
Rihanna has drastically shifted what we think ‘pregnancy style’ can look like, and I love that for everyone
One very fun thing is that we can expect more excellent outfits during this pregnancy, because Rih has on-point maternity style. This is exciting from a purely fashion standpoint, but I also love seeing how she’s changing the way we think about fashion for pregnant people.
As Michelle Ruiz wrote in Vogue last year, “‘maternity style’ can feel like an oxymoron. It’s a phrase that conjures the dowdiness of Princess Diana’s era of expectancy: smocked bubbles with Peter Pan collars intended to cover up swelling bellies; cutesy outfits better suited to actual babies than their mothers.” Regardless of your personal style, there’s a societal expectation that governs how pregnant people should dress—that, again, dovetails with ideas around vulgarity and propriety—as well as a purely practical lack of options, especially for fat people or those with more avant-garde personal styles.
That’s why it’s so powerful to see Rih maintain her personal style while pregnant. “Rihanna’s style may feel newly bold to mothers-to-be, but in many ways, she’s simply still dressing like herself,” Ruiz went on to write. “Modern maternity dressing is about that same sense of non-conformity: the desire not to be othered; not to be relegated to maternity-only clothes; to persist in dressing like yourself.”
This is not to say that everyone should rock belly-baring outfits and sky-high heels; growing another human sounds exhausting and physically demanding and if that’s not your jam, that’s fine. I just really like that Rihanna is challenging the idea that pregnancy is, or should be, a period devoid of personal style or individuality.
There was a very interesting conversation about what pregnant people can and can’t do following Rih’s performance
I saw several tweets about how empowering it was to see Rihanna perform at the Super Bowl while pregnant, the implication being that productivity during pregnancy is perfectly normal, and an equal number arguing her performance wasn’t ‘low-energy’ or ‘disappointing’ because she did it while pregnant, implying that this was an unusual feat. To me, this signals that we still don’t really know how to talk about pregnancy in the context of capitalism. On one hand, we’re clearly trying to acknowledge people’s agency and autonomy and move away from the idea that femininity is correlated with fragility, especially since workplaces are notorious for discriminating against pregnant people. On the other hand, it would be ridiculous to pretend that pregnancy isn’t physically burdensome; it absolutely does impact your physical capabilities, which can make it difficult to be productive. Also, there’s probably a whole other conversation to be had here about North Americans’ obsession with making everything about work, thus turning productivity into a moral good—which only helps corporations maximize their profits.
(Relatedly, there was also some toxic positivity BS basically saying if Rihanna can perform at the Super Bowl pregnant you can do whatever work thing you have to do today, which whatever. Much like the memes about how we have the same number of hours in a day as Beyoncé, I’m going to ignore anyone that tells me I have access to the same opportunities, resources and support as this extremely wealthy multi-hyphenate and I think you should too.)
We didn’t know about this baby until Rihanna wanted us to know, which should remind us that the most successful celebrities exert tight control over not just their public images, but also the flow of information about them
If you ever doubted that your fave celebrities are making liberal use of NDAs, contracts, business relationships and whatever other tools they have at their disposal to exert as much control as possible over the narratives about and around them, please consider this proof that they are. Yes, even the ones who are perceived as chill, authentic and unbothered.
And Did You Hear About…
The open letter penned by New York Times contributors calling for the paper to address and rectify its anti-trans bigotry. (Non-contributors can also sign to express our support; I did and hope you will, too.)
Penn Badgley saying he doesn’t want to do sex scenes, and the complicated, kind of exhausting discourse that inspired. (Again.) (Also, somehow this led people to become nostalgic for the Hays Code, which was super racist, sexist and homophobic, btw.)
The beef between DeuxMoi the IG account, and DeuxMoi the subreddit, which has renamed itself FauxMoi—and is actually way better than the IG account, fyi.
This Twitter thread of people’s ‘holy trinity’ of rom-coms.
How TikTok influences media coverage, specifically in the case of the Ohio train derailment. Since the accident, the platform has both encouraged news coverage and fed audiences misinformation and conspiracy theories (including about a purported media blackout).
Bonus: every word of this.
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