The Policy of Rihanna’s Pregnancy Style


since that time announced her pregnancy via Instagram in late January and a masterfully staged paparazzi shot Rihanna’s maternity style stands out for not wearing more than they have, as she and partner ASAP Rocky stroll under the Riverside Drive viaduct.

She didn’t wear a tent dress. She didn’t wear maternity jeans. In fact, she hardly wore any clothes.

Instead, she showed off her bare tummy at every opportunity: at a Fenty beauty event, with green flowing tassels and ombré pants; Super Bowl bra, sheer blue unbuttoned top and low-cut gray jeans; dragon-embroidered black pants, a vinyl bandeau, and a crystal cap at a Gucci show; A sheer doll dress over a lace bra and panties at Dior; and most recently, she wore a sheer organza Valentino turtleneck over a sequined skirt and bandeau to Jay-Z’s post-Oscars party.

In the annals of public pregnancy, there has never been such an image.

Unsurprisingly, the general reaction among celebrity viewing sites was gasping swoon. “Rihanna Keeps Wearing Her Hottest Maternity Looks Ever” HighSnobiety squeaked. “Rihanna Rebrands Her Single ‘Motherhood Style’,” Glamor England. sang.

Of course they’re right. But really, style choices are just the beginning. Dressing to consistently confront the world with the physical reality of her pregnancy, Rihanna has done much more than make a fashion statement. “It makes a completely extreme and highly political statement,” said Liza Tsaliki, professor of media studies and popular culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece.

It all lies in the familiar trope of the “famous crash clock”. Sly, isn’t it?

The result is a dizzying swirl of contemporary phenomena, including (1) celebrity culture, where we take consumer and behavioral cues from increasingly dark names; (2) What Ms. Tsaliki calls “aestheticization of the body and monitoring of women’s waistlines”; and (3) modern politics.

All of this takes this particular maternity dress story far beyond being a role model. (They also explain why this particular “look” role modeling is disproportionately exciting for so many.)

After all, this is a time that applies to many people on the far right, and even on the mainstream right,” said Renée Ann Cramer, vice principal of Drake University and author of “Pregnant with the Stars: Watching and Desiring the Celebrity Baby Fist.” promoting policies that challenge the continued autonomy of women that define people over their bodies, lives and decision-making capacities.”

Rihanna is modeling a completely opposite reality, dressing up to showcase her pregnant belly and having nothing to do with traditional maternity wear. “I’m still a human being and I’m my human too,” Ms. Cramer says. That he can be “autonomous, strong and on his own” even while carrying a life. She combines the right to dress however you want with any other constitutional right, she.

It’s a pretty radical move.

After all, the pregnant body has been celebrated, spied on, hidden, and considered problematic for centuries.

In ancient times, pregnancy, seen as a physical embodiment of women’s bond with mother earth, was revered and displayed, but by medieval and medieval Christianity, it turned into a state of embarrassment, not too connected, Ms Tsaliki said. sacrilegious

It had become a symbol of our basic desires and a sign of female instability and lack of control, and so it has become something that is best hidden and (literally) hidden behind closed doors. At least until the child appears and the woman becomes the epitome of pure maternal selfishness.

It was an emerging evolution.”depicting pregnancyThe 2020 exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London has shown how, since the 16th century, “the response to the disturbing physical reminder of mortality and sexuality engendered by pregnant bodies has changed”. Or so Helen Charman wrote in a review of the show in the international art magazine. Apollo.

She said paintings and other art forms reveal how they move from presenting pregnant bodies as “affirmations of paternalistic structures of inheritance and power” to claiming that they don’t really exist (or that there is no condition for being pregnant). putting pregnancy front and center as an increasingly idealized state.

This began in 1952 when Lucille Ball “became pregnant during the filming of the movie.i love lucy” and its producers to write the condition impossible to ignore, as dramatized in her latest film “Being the Ricardos” (although they still cannot use the literal word “pregnant”) to the script and to everyone’s screen. ”

This, in turn, led to the tent dress compromise. (Remember Princess Diana’s frilly aprons and sailor suits during her pregnancy in the early and mid-1980s?) At least until Demi Moore shocked the world by posing naked and heavily pregnant. Vanity Fair cover In 1991, pregnancy inaugurated the art portrait era.

And this period was extended by the navel-like veils. Cindy Crawfordnaked and pregnant W; Britney Spears, nude and pregnant for Harper’s Bazaar in 2006; and Serena WilliamsNaked and pregnant at Vanity Fair in 2017. Beyoncé’s 2017 photo shoot/announcement She said she was pregnant with twins, a heavily art-directed series of paintings that seem to encompass references like Botticelli’s Venus and a renaissance Madonna.

As the pregnant body gained value for its life-giving potential, it has increasingly become a “safe place of breach,” Ms. Cramer said. This meant “one of the rare occasions when people who define women can safely break some norms”.

However, while they may appear progressive, they are still “conforming to brilliant tradition,” as Ms. Charman writes of such images in Apollo.

Not so, Rihanna. She made facing her pregnancy a part of every day. Or perhaps more appropriately, every day. “I’ve been waiting for the announcement,” said Miss Cramer—perhaps a few more, carefully calculated looks. “But there was no going back to cover up.”

While it’s possible that this was a completely unconscious choice—perhaps her skin is so sensitive that anything on her stomach is uncomfortable—Rihanna has a history of deliberately using her own physicality and profile to force her to reconsider old prejudices and social conventions. female agency and beauty. Most obviously, the Savage X Fenty underwear brand is currently worth about $3 billion.

In fact, the fact that Slick Woods chose to model at the first Savage X Fenty show in 2018 when she was nine months pregnant in just pasties and lacy lingerie may herald her current approach. The famous Miss Woods gave birth on the podium. send later “I’m here to say I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT, ANYTIME I WANT, AND YOU CAN ALSO.” (There were some additional words to emphasize his purpose, but they cannot be printed in this newspaper.)

Change the date and these lines could easily be the motto of Rihanna’s maternity wear. He did to characterize She described her pregnancy style as “rebellious”.

The question now, said Ms. Cramer, is “whether open celebration of embodied power through pregnancy will make a difference”. Could a “strong pregnancy performance by a wealthy woman at the top of her game” be filtered out to change how all pregnancies are perceived?

If so, Rihanna will have done much more than influence how pregnant women dress. It will have influenced our thinking about women’s rights. Pregnant or not.





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