Rihanna’s performance raises bar for celeb pregnancy announcements
NEW YORK — When one becomes a mother, Rihanna mused before her epic Super Bowl halftime show, “there’s something that just happens where you feel like you could take on the world — you can do anything.”
And so she did Sunday, on one of the biggest stages in the world. Live. Just about nine months after giving birth to her first child, a boy (whose name hasn’t yet been revealed), with A$AP Rocky.
While haters and stans debate Rihanna’s performance, some of the former trashing the show overall, she joins a contingent of famous women to capture a cultural moment with a pregnancy reveal.
And she did it while floating on a platform, in a fire-engine-red boiler suit zipped strategically down to reveal her substantial bump. Underneath was a matching bodysuit with a leather breastplate tied on.
She did it wearing three vintage diamond brooches, in a pair of low sneakers. And halfway through, she did it in a huge red puffer coat and matching gloves.
To her navy, she shined like a diamond. Rihanna didn’t talk about the pregnancy before the Super Bowl. Instead, she focused on the decision to spend time away from her son for the first time, and how difficult that was. If she was going to leave her baby to perform, she said, she was going to do it for something big.
That alone turned the pre-Super Bowl discourse to working mothers, without her even mentioning she was having another child.
Rihanna fans were having none of it when it came to criticism of her performance.
“What I don’t wanna hear, and def not from ANY MAN was that Rihanna didn’t do enough during her #Superbowl performance. Y’all get a cold and you’ll think the Bubonic Plague got you. This woman is pregnant, performed and danced for 13 mins while suspended in the air,” tweeted the writer Luvvie Ajayi Jones.
Added actor and writer Danielle Pinnock on Twitter: “My girl was pregnant and y’all still not happy with the performance?! The internet is wild. Preggers and probably swollen AF, Rihanna gave us choreography in the sky, dancers that look like the Michelin men, hit after HIT all while pregnant! Go AWF sis!”