Enlarge image
Rihanna at Paris Fashion Week: Pregnant on her terms
Photo: Edward Berthelot/Getty Images
There's one bad habit I can't get my head around to this day: patting a pregnant woman's stomach.
It is incomprehensible to me how strangers see this change in body as an invitation not only to grope or even stroke the emerging curve (as if the stomach were a lucky knob on the portal of an Italian cathedral), but also whisperingly evaluate its shape and size.
Apparently they forget that they are touching a person they may not be familiar with without consent, just like that, in the middle of the supermarket or on the subway.
Pregnant women are apparently viewed by some in the public sphere as common property in which body boundaries and sovereignty dissolve.
Reproductive rights, for example the free decision to have children or not, have always been subject to interpretation and power structures.
There is a long tradition of political abdominal controls, and to this day women not only fight for their right to physical self-determination, but also in many countries for being able to obtain
information
about it at all .
Even without pregnancy, women's bodies are politically fondled, formed, standardized and evaluated.
Their regulation by the legal system and society seems so natural that many fail to realize that it is strange that there are more rules in the law for women's bodies than for men.
more on the subject
How stars stage their pregnancy: Other circumstances by Ulrike Knöfel
Scarlett Johansson on Pregnancy Comments: 'These Judgments are Crazy'
Dealing with miscarriages: »People said: ›That was just a bunch of cells‹« A SPIEGEL interview by Nike Laurenz
This bureaucratization of the body continues in business and society.
The French philosopher Michel Foucault has already discussed how the control of bodies developed since the late Middle Ages.
One aspect here is the perspective of observers on the observed, or the question of who can observe others in certain social arrangements - and who must constantly fear being observed unnoticed and suddenly being controlled and prosecuted.
The baby bump breaks the logic of social control
The measures that affect pregnant women can also be understood in terms of the social power techniques described by Foucault.
And the observation or the social view of pregnant women, which is still cultivated today, still seems to me to be very medieval against this background.
You can check for yourself to what extent you think a pregnant woman should do or better not do anything, how she should appear and behave in private and public spaces.
Obviously, the pregnant woman is not only subject to the discipline that affects women in general, but also becomes a body that must be tamed very quickly because of its specific and perceptible status in its almost frivolous fertility.
The visible baby bump thus becomes a socio-political site, since it breaks the logic of social control by making both female sexuality and the socially desired reproduction visible at the same time.
But it's also confusing: on the one hand, the "multiply yourselves!" is socially desirable, on the other hand, the myth of the chaste woman still echoes.
What is the logical consequence?
Of course: just hide your stomach.
In her analysis of prominent pregnancy portraits, the art historian and SPIEGEL journalist Ulrike Knöfel explained what painting used to be like: »In many of these paintings, Maria looks chaste and not pregnant, only occasionally does she appear as if she were in different circumstances.
And this principle of restraint stayed with me for a very long time: you shouldn’t see pregnancies, at least not that clearly.«
If this is not possible, the woman is infantilized during her pregnancy through unsolicited touching, teaching and a corset of controlled modesty.
Contradiction resolved!
The only concession made to women and their stomachs in public space is an economic one – which of course also represents a different kind of body control: when celebrities have their stomachs shiny and staged for magazine covers and social media.
The best-known examples include the cover with Demi Moore on »Vanity Fair« or the Botticelli-like photos of Beyoncé, which gave the image of the pregnant black woman the visibility it needed in public.
Even in the logic of platform-oriented self-marketing, the stomach can be shown as professional private content (and is also diligently commented on).
What is remarkable here is the aesthetic framework, which has established itself as a modern depiction of pregnancy: ethereal, apparently natural arrangements in pastel shades with a floral Alnatura look.
The pregnant woman is portrayed as a kind of pure, nature-related, but also somewhat childlike mother, optionally as a Marian figure, flower child or asexual Gaia.
An artist has now broken this modern cliché: the singer Rihanna.
With staged paparazzi photos, she presented to the public what she thinks of hiding the baby bump: nothing.
more on the subject
Rihanna on her pregnancy: "Everything is a challenge"
Heavily pregnant Rihanna on Vogue cover: 'My body is doing incredible things right now and I won't be ashamed of it'
Photoshoot with friend A$AP Rocky:Rihanna is pregnant
The May cover of Vogue, photographed by Annie Leibovitz, which features Rihanna in a sexy lace bodysuit, wasn't even the most subversive image - quite the contrary, as her stomach was retouched.
No, it was rather her appearances at events where she made her self-empowerment visible through various outfits and almost laughed at existing social norms.
Latex, faux fur, fringes, glitter, tight tops, low-slung pants, lots of transparency;
most notably perhaps her lingerie-like outfit, consisting of a sheer babydoll, lingerie, and black patent leather boots.
She staged herself as a sexually self-determined woman – with a baby bump.
For some commentators, this combination of motherhood and freedom of movement led to cognitive overload and scandals.
Due to the constant social surveillance of the female torso, it seems unusual to so openly demand the untouchable presence of one's own body in public space.
Especially as a black woman, whose body is subject to a different objectification and crossing of boundaries.
Rihanna's gut is political — on
her
terms.
This is something I wish for every pregnant woman to be able to have as a matter of course, to be able to have a belly without being bothered, on one's own, self-determined terms, without being stared at, touched and encroaching on others.