Orlando Sentinel (Sunday)

The politics of Rihanna’s pregnancy style

She is connecting the ability to dress how you like with constituti­onal rights

- By Vanessa Friedman The New York Times

Ever since she announced her pregnancy in late January via Instagram and an artfully staged paparazzi shot of her and her partner A$AP Rocky strolling beneath the Riverside Drive viaduct, Rihanna’s maternity style has been marked more by what she has not worn than what she has.

She has not worn tent dresses. She has not worn maternity jeans. In fact, she has barely worn much clothing at all.

Instead she has bared her naked belly at seemingly every turn: in green draped fringe and ombré pants at a Fenty beauty event; in a bra, sheer blue top unbuttoned over her bump and low-slung gray jeans at the Super Bowl; in dragon-bedecked black pants, a vinyl bandeau and a crystal headdress at a Gucci show; in a sheer baby-doll dress over a lacy bra and panties at Dior; and, most recently, in a sheer organza Valentino turtleneck over a sequin skirt and bandeau at Jay-Z’s Oscars after-party.

In the annals of public pregnancy, there has never been a display quite like it.

Not surprising­ly, the general reaction among celebrity watch sites has been a breathless swoon. “Rihanna Keeps Wearing the Hottest Maternity Looks Ever,” HighSnobie­ty crowed. “Rihanna Is Single-handedly Giving ‘Maternity Style’ a Rebrand,” Glamour U.K. sang.

They’re right, of course. But, really, the style choices are just the beginning.

In dressing to confront the world with the physical reality of her pregnancy so

consistent­ly, Rihanna has gone way past just making a fashion statement. She’s making a “totally transgress­ive and highly political statement,” said Liza Tsaliki, a professor of media studies and popular culture at the National and Kapodistri­an University of Athens in Greece.

It’s just all couched in the familiar trope of “the celebrity bump watch.” Sneaky, right?

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

All of which take this particular pregnancy dress story far beyond mere “get the look” role modeling. (They also explain why this particular “get-the-look” role modeling has been so

disproport­ionately exciting for so many.)

After all, said Renée Ann Cramer, the deputy provost of Drake University and author of “Pregnant With the Stars: Watching and Wanting the Celebrity Baby Bump,” this is a time when “many people on the far right and even the mainstream right are promoting policies that challenge the continuing autonomy of women-identifyin­g people over their bodies, lives and decision-making capacity.”

By dressing to showcase her pregnant belly, and in a way that has nothing to do with traditiona­l maternity wear, Rihanna is modeling an entirely opposite reality.

“She’s saying, ‘I’m a person still, and I’m my person,’ ” Cramer said. That she can be “autonomous, powerful and herself, even while carrying a life.” She’s connecting the right to dress how you like with all sorts of other, more constituti­onal rights.

It’s a pretty radical move.

The pregnant body, after all, has been celebrated, policed, hidden away and considered problemati­c for centuries.

In ancient times, pregnancy was venerated and exhibited, seen as a physical embodiment of women’s connection to Mother Earth, but by the Middle Ages and medieval Christendo­m, Tsaliki said, it had been transforme­d into a shameful state, one connected not so much to the sacred as the profane.

It had become a symbol of our base desires and a sign of female instabilit­y and lack of control and thus something best kept behind closed doors and (literally) under wraps.

At least until the child emerged and the woman was transforme­d into a paragon of pure maternal selflessne­ss.

It was an evolution revealed in “Portraying Pregnancy,” a 2020 exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London that demonstrat­ed how, since the 16th century, “the response to the unsettling physical reminder of mortality and sexuality engendered by pregnant bodies changed.” Or so wrote Helen Charman in a review of the show in the internatio­nal art magazine Apollo.

As the pregnant body became valorized for its life-giving potential, it increasing­ly became “a place of safe transgress­ion,” Cramer said. And that meant that “it’s one of the few times women-identifyin­g people can safely disrupt some norms.”

Progressiv­e though they may seem, however, as Charman wrote in Apollo of such images, they neverthele­ss “conform to the glossy convention­s.”

Not so Rihanna. She has made confrontin­g her pregnancy part of her every day. Or maybe more pertinentl­y, our every day.

“I was expecting the announceme­nt,” Cramer said — perhaps even a few other, carefully calculated appearance­s. “But there has been no return to covering up.”

Though it’s possible that this is a totally unconsciou­s choice — maybe her skin is so sensitive that it’s uncomforta­ble to have anything on her belly — Rihanna herself has a history of consciousl­y using her own physicalit­y and profile to force reconsider­ation of old prejudices and social convention­s about female agency and beauty. Most obviously in her Savage X Fenty lingerie brand, currently valued at around $3 billion.

Indeed, her current approach may have been foreshadow­ed by her choice to have Slick Woods, at nine months pregnant, model in her first Savage X Fenty show in 2018 wearing only pasties and lacy lingerie. Famously, Woods went into labor on the runway, later posting “I’m here to say I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT WHENEVER I WANT AND SO CAN YOU.” (There were some additional words in there to emphasize her point, but they cannot be printed in this newspaper.)

Change the date and those lines could easily be the motto of Rihanna’s maternity wear.

She did characteri­ze her own pregnancy style as “rebellious.”

Now the question, said Cramer, is whether “an overt celebratio­n of embodied power through pregnancy can make a difference.” Can the “performanc­e of a powerful pregnancy by a wealthy woman at the top of her game filter down” to change how all pregnancie­s are perceived?

If so, Rihanna will have done a lot more than influence how pregnant women dress. She’ll have influenced how we think about the rights of women. Pregnant or not.

 ?? MIKE COPPOLA/GETTY ?? A$AP Rocky and Rihanna celebrate Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin on Feb. 11 in Los Angeles.
MIKE COPPOLA/GETTY A$AP Rocky and Rihanna celebrate Fenty Beauty and Fenty Skin on Feb. 11 in Los Angeles.

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