She was far from the first celebrity to orchestrate a public pregnancy reveal. Online chatterers likened the moment to Beyoncé’s bump unveiling (I’m sorry this language is all so revoltingly cutesy; we really need better pregnancy colloquialisms) at the Video Music Awards 12 years ago. In that moment, Beyoncé waited until the end of her televised performance to dramatically unbutton her sequined blazer. She then rubbed her belly for several seconds, smiling as the audience around her lost their minds.
Comparatively speaking, that was a pregnancy announcement. Beyoncé’s reveal was a definitive entrance to motherhood, an invitation for fans to celebrate her transformation. Rihanna’s reveal was less an announcement than an acknowledgment, almost a casual one. Viewers had to wait until the halftime show finished to receive definitive confirmation from Rihanna’s representatives that they’d even seen what they thought they’d seen.
The reveal was seamlessly folded into her performance rather than given its own showcase. It conceded that, yes, something was happening inside this woman’s body — but meanwhile, when is the last time you listened to “B—- Better Have My Money”? That song bangs. And meanwhile, do you remember that Rihanna is also a business mogul? Let her remind you, by pausing mid-set to produce a compact from her own cosmetic line and powder her nose. Her choreography was sultry and sexy; less maternal-madonna than Madonna-Madonna, down to a few well-placed crotch grabs.
There’s a lot you could find inspiring about what Rihanna did on Sunday night. It was the singer’s first live performance in seven years. Rehearsals would have been punishing even for someone who wasn’t presumably trying to navigate them while clutching a first-trimester barf bag.
Moreover, Rihanna was performing not only as a pregnant woman but as a new parent. “When you become a mom, there’s something that just happens where you feel like you can take on the world, you can do anything,” she’d said in a media preview, speaking of her decision to accept the gig. I assure you that this aspirational posture is not universal to all new mothers, many of whom are not trying to take on the world, just take on a shower.
But what I found the most uplifting about Rihanna’s performance was this: The pregnancy was not the star of the show. Rihanna was the star of the show.
I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but we’ve been in a bit of hellscape for women this past year. The fall of Roe v. Wade pulled back the curtains on how many Americans view a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. State legislators double-dog dared one another to propose increasingly extreme antiabortion legislation, the messaging of which summed up to this: Pregnant women are, first and foremost, vessels for unborn fetuses; walking incubators whose own lives must be sublimated by the potential lives they are growing in their wombs.
And into this: Rihanna. Rihanna gyrating on a platform, Rihanna soaring over a stadium, Rihanna singing the hook from “S&M” while ensconced in some sort of vinyl-boobed chestplate and presiding over a phalanx of backup dancers. Can women have it all? I don’t know — but if you’re Rihanna, you can have a deep back-catalogue of singable hits, and you can also casually touch your belly as if to say, Oh, and I’m working on this, too.
We need more of this. Not more Rihannas — there can be only one — but we need more examples of women living as full and complete human beings and who also happen to be pregnant. More illustrations of how pregnancy is part of a woman, and not the other way around.
Rihanna revealed she was pregnant after performing at the Super Bowl, and that was inspirational. But during the performance she centered her own self, her own talent and her own hard work, and that was inspirational too.
