Like most mothers’ remarks, this one was well meaning.
Sarah Brown was 22 weeks pregnant and had started posting more images of her exposed belly on her social media account. In one photo, the hem of a gray T-shirt crept up her bare, newly rounded midriff. She wore a beige blazer over the T-shirt, and her husband’s A.P.C. jeans hung low on her waist.
Brown, a handbag designer and stylist, thought it was a good look. Then came her mother’s response: “Do you want me to buy you a maternity jumpsuit?”
“Good intentions on her part, but I think she saw it almost as like, ‘Oh, you aren’t buying yourself the clothes that you need right now,’ which was obviously not the case,” Brown, 36, said. “I was specifically styling around the belly and wanting to show it off a bit.”
If Brown’s mom is reading this, rest assured: It’s not just Brown who is letting her stomach peek out. Over the past few years, pregnant bellies have poked out beneath crop tops, protruded from artful cutouts and burst forth from skimpy bikinis — deliberately. They’re onstage at concerts, in celebrity pregnancy-announcement posts on Instagram, at the park, on the beach and in the street.
Gone (mostly) are the days of hiding the baby bump under boxy maternity clothes. Instead, expectant mothers are going the Rihanna route: reveal, style and exalt a new, if temporary, silhouette.
It’s partly generational, said Laura McAndrews, an associate professor in the School of Fashion at Kent State University who has studied Gen Z’s attitudes toward maternity wear.
“Because they’ve been messaged all this body positivity they’re embracing all stages of their body, especially women,” she said, adding: “We’re not like back in the 1990s, and even earlier, where women just completely covered their bodies with these big tents.”
There was, of course, Demi Moore, seven months pregnant and naked on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991. But at the time it was scandalous, and didn’t necessarily change how everyday women styled their pregnant bodies.
For millennials and Gen Z, there are dozens such images seared into the psyche. In 2017, Beyoncé set the internet ablaze with pictures of her bare belly at her baby shower during her second pregnancy. In 2022, Rihanna announced her first pregnancy wearing a half-buttoned bright pink Chanel puffer jacket, her bare bump in full view. As the singer came to define a more revealing, fashion-forward mode of maternity dressing, many other celebrities have followed suit. Just last month, Anne Hathaway announced her pregnancy in a white crop top and white skirt.
The bumps are out now.
“I’ve never been someone who was really looking forward to the physical demands of being pregnant, but I have to say that I’ve been really proud of and in awe of my body,” said the singer and author Michelle Zauner, who performed in June at Governors Ball in New York in an unbuttoned cardigan, revealing a lacy black bra and her bare pregnant belly. She was directly inspired by Rihanna, she said.
The choice was also a matter of personal taste: Zauner was averse to maternity clothes that were “just like giant muumuu sacks,” she added.
It is not that women are suddenly deciding, uncharacteristically, to dress racier for nine months. Rather, many are seeking continuity in their wardrobe and style as their bodies change. Zauner often wears clothes by Shu Shu Tong, the designer of her bright green cardigan; Brown was no stranger to a crop top before she became pregnant.
And for those who are fashion minded, figuring out how to put outfits together out of non-maternity wear — and deciding how to frame, or flaunt, a bump — can be a fun exercise.
“There is a challenge to styling clothes that aren’t maternity wear for a pregnant body that makes me want to just not buy maternity clothes,” she added.
Until relatively recently, maternity clothes have usually served the purpose of concealing the body. In 1930, Vogue magazine provided tips and tricks for creating the “illusion of the naturally heavy figure,” as opposed to a pregnant one.
That is partly because, for most of history, pregnancy was considered “kind of rude — it is evidence of having had sex,” said Isabel Davis, author of “Conceiving Histories: Trying for Pregnancy, Past and Present.”
The Vogue article from 1930 suggested large sleeves, a wrap shirt, a tuxedo coat and wearing a size 38 or 40 as opposed to 16 or 18, in order to conceal a pregnancy.
“I started this company when it was taboo to talk about pregnancy, and women were hiding it from their bosses because they didn’t want to get fired,” said Ariane Goldman, chief creative officer of Hatch, the maternity clothing company she founded in 2011. “Over the last decade, there’s been this incredible shift to the celebration and the power of carrying a child and owning it.”
If women now are so empowered they are bypassing buying clothes created specifically for the pregnant body, what does that mean for the maternity market?
Goldman said it’s something she discusses with her team often. But even those keen on putting together a pregnancy wardrobe with a mix of a boyfriend’s or spouse’s clothes and their own may eventually find themselves needing a few pieces.
“We really turn to function and the fact that people still need clothing to do certain things,” Goldman said. (Brown, the stylist, said that for her part, she made it to the end of her pregnancy with a couple pairs of Los Angeles Apparel elastic waist pants and two Paloma Wool tops that unbuttoned at the sides; maternity clothes never entered her closet.)
In keeping with the times, though, Hatch eschews Zauner’s dreaded “muumuu sacks” in favor of trendier silhouettes — slip dresses, oversize button-downs and “boyfriend jeans” with just the right amount of slouch. Even as these clothes are meant to fit pregnant bodies, many of these clothes are also styled with bumps out.
Other brands are responding to the shift, too. The Instagram account for Artipoppe, a Dutch luxury brand of baby carriers, is dotted with tastefully exposed pregnant bellies on a balcony, in bed, in a river, underwater, at the beach, in a closet. The overarching message being communicated to the consumer is: Show off that belly.
“There has been massive change, I think, from a cultural perspective,” said Sophie Ludmann, the chief marketing officer. “It feels like the Rihannas of this world and all these mommies being super proud of showing off their bellies have set the tone for being a little bit more unapologetic with your pregnant belly.”
But though some women are no longer hiding their pregnant bodies, as the 1930s Vogue article suggested, they are not completely baring the skin of their bellies either.
When the three women in the Make America Great Again sphere who are currently pregnant — Usha Vance, Karoline Leavitt and Katie Miller — appear in public, their bumps are fully covered.
“Showing the belly and the skin — it doesn’t root from Republican conservatism,” said Elizabeth Weigle, a scholar at the University of Georgia who has researched the evolution of the maternal image. Exposing the bare belly is a form of rebellion, she said, not a way to fit into the mainstream.
Still, these women’s bumps aren’t hidden. They dress in sequins, bright colors and more form-fitting dresses — like Usha Vance’s coral maternity dress from Old Navy — accentuating their pregnant figures. (And, notably, Miller did go full, bare bump out in a recent Mother’s Day post on X.)
With celebrities and public figures, “the bare bump really shows you’ve really done it,” said Davis, the “Conceiving Histories” author. “It is a mark of authenticity.”
For Zauner, the way she styles her bump is a message she wants to share with to the world, but also one she wants to reinforce for herself.
“There was a lot of like anticipatory mourning about losing my identity and my work,” Zauner said. “Once I got pregnant, I realized that was always going to be a part of me. I feel so deeply proud of myself and I feel like it sets a really great example that you don’t have to give up your dreams and ambitions to be a mother.”
