It’s been 7 hours and 16 days since Beyonce took her lovely mug away, having not posted or been seen much since the end of May.
If I were a betting woman, I would say she is somewhere nursing a set of boy -girl twins (who we’ll call Pink and Gray in keeping with the Color theme), and creating wonderful memories nurturing the growing family that includes hubby Jay Z and 5-year old daughter Blue Ivy.
Or she could be in labor as suggested by many given her stylist Chuck Amos‘ cryptic Instagram message and photo of himself with Bey.
The post in question showed a photo of Amos with the singer and was captioned, “hang in there, Mama! <3 You.”
Could be something or just a general shout out. Who knows?
Because we have no new news, I thought tonight, I would share some throwback Thursday photos of a Throwback to Mom’s Day 2017 pics she posted on her blog.
The pop star wore a green floral Dolce and Gabbana dress that matched Blue’s from the same designer.
She carried Balmain bag and was rocking Giuseppe Zanotti pumps and a pair of shades by Miu Miu.
Blue’s shoes are by Bloch.
Meanwhile, Jay Z was sporting an Dries Van Noten jacket and a baseball cap from his company Roc Nation.
Speaking of Beyonce [See earlier post today], Easter may be over but that hasn’t stopped the Queen Bey from sharing pics that she took from her and her family’s Easter adventure. The videos and pics include photos of herself in a white dress matching with her daughter Blue Ivy. The duo are wearing matching braided cornrows with beads on the end. Blue wears real bunny ears and the pop star uses her two fingers to simulate rabbit ears.
Beyonce Knowles Carter and her husband, rapper and biz mogul Shawn “Jay Z” Carterare expecting a pair of twins later this year. They are parents to 5-year old Blue, the first child for them both. Unlike with Blue Ivy, she has been taking and sharing a lot more photos of her pregnancy and herself out and about at events. It’s refreshing and perfect for the BumpWatch Brigade like this blog! (ha!) Enjoy the pics!
Of course Beyonce and Jay-Z have reportedly already spent a half a million on an ultra luxe nursery for the twins.
Matching cribs, rockers and designer sheets for $30,000? Of course. A $50,000 state-of-the art sound system? Check!
Sources to Life & Style magazine share that the superstar couple are going all out.
“Bey and Jay knocked out a wall between two bedrooms to create a master suite-size nursery inside their LA home,” says a source. “The twins will have matching cribs and rockers and designer sheets totaling $30,000, plus a $50,000 state-of-the-art sound system.”
And yes to the twin babies having something fantabulous to look at as they drift asleep.
“She commissioned a $20,000 mural on the ceiling, complete with glowing stars,” the source told the gossip magazine. “It’s incredible. It’s the entire galaxy above the nursery.”
The nursery will also feature custom walk-in closets, a fireplace, and a movie theater.
This is par for course for the multi-Grammy winning platinum-selling power couple. They spent $1.8 million on gifts for Blue Ivy before she was even born, reports said at the time, including a $600,000 rocking chair.
They are expecting at least one boy, insiders leaked.
“They’ve only felt comfortable announcing it because she’s so far along, and they’ve gone through all the genetic testing and everything is great,” the insider said. “Jay has wanted a boy since their daughter was born. Their wish is coming true.”
Days before giving birth, Natalie Portman starred in the recently released music video for James Blake’s song “My Willing Heart,” released on Monday.
In the black and white video which Anna Rose Holmer directed, the Jackie andThe Black Swan actress floats in a swimming pool and is later seen in a room caressing her bare baby belly to the melodic but haunting song.
The Oscar- winning actress and her choreographer husband Benjamin Millepied welcomed daughter Amala days after wrapping up shooting of the video. The couple also have a 5-year-old son, Aleph.
The song appears on the British singer/songwriter’s critically acclaimed 2016 album, “The Colour in Anything.” He is famous for experimenting with different styles of music, including electronic and rap.
Natalie may have been one of the first celeb women to appear in a music video so close to delivery but she wasn’t the first to shoot a video while heavily pregnant.
In 2011, Beyonce was pregnant with her daughter Blue Ivy in her Countdown Video. That year, P!nk was also visibly pregnant with her daughter Willow in her girls empowerment song “F*&>Perfect”.
Before then, Canadian -born artist Deborah Cox showed off her 3rd trimester belly in the later frames of her “Beautiful U R” video” which is also about female empowerment and self esteem. Finally, Whitney Houston, was also uplifting women in her remake of Chaka Khan‘s “I’m Every Woman” and was pregnant with her daughter Bobbi Kristina. (RIP to both of them)
Expectant mama Beyoncé shared some updated baby bump photos via Instagram Saturday.
The pop superstar, 35, stopped by a Los Angeles performance by the Alvin Ailey dance company last Saturday (March 11) to support mom Tina Lawson and Tina’s Angels, the mentorship group founded by her mother.
“Backstage after the Alvin Ailey dancers performance it was magnificent,” Lawson Instagrammed the group photo backstage. “With my beautiful Tina’s Angels and with a few of the mentors. My very gracious daughter who met the girls and spent some time with them and made their day!”
As well, the Bootylicious hitmaker – who is expecting twins with husband Jay Z – shared some silly Snapchat videos with 5-year-old daughter Blue Ivy.
I
Last week, the Grammy Award-winning singer hinted that her twins might be boys.
Earlier this month, the Formation hitmaker posted photos with Blue at the Hollywood premiere of Beauty and the Beast.
The former Destiny’s Child frontwoman also stepped out at the Weinstein Company and Grey Goose’s party for the Academy Award-nominated film Lion on Feb. 25.
Editor’s Note: So your break from Beyonce pregnancy posts is over. Sorry to the non-fans but the Bey Stan in me has a few more things to share. (smile)
This week, not only did Beyonce Knowles Carter give us pregnancy twin news, but she also overwhelmed fans, followers, haters and the like with tons of maternity photos…present and past.
As many know, the multi-platinum selling mega star’s first pregnancy was dogged and plagued by rumors that it was fake and that she used a surrogate to bring her and husband Sean “Jay-Z” Carter’s daughter, Blue Ivy in to the world.
It all stemmed from an interview with an Australian television show in October 2011 where the folds of her dress as she went to sit down made it appear as if her bump had caved in. In actuality, as conspiracy sites have discussed incessantly, her belly, then at 24 weeks was below the dress. But it hasn’t stopped many from thinking Mrs. Carter never carried Blue at all.
From an Instagram share of a beach trip with her bump covered in sand, to a snippet of a video Jay took while they vacationed in Croatia and shared on Tumblr revealing a very early bump, to silhouettes shots and post birth images seen in her 2013 HBO documentary, “Life is But a Dream”, she has subtly given the doubters visual proof that she really was pregnant. But they are relentless. Even a paparazzi capture of her in a sheer blue caftan by the pool didn’t sway them.
She didn’t seem fazed by the rumors, tellingKatie Couric in an interview before a performance at Roseland theater while still expecting, “You know there are certain things that are so far, it doesn’t even affect me…I am cool, it is so ridiculous and over the top.”
And in the HBO documentary, she addressed it again:
“A stupid rumor, the most ridiculous rumor I’ve ever had about me.To think that I would be that vain. I respect mothers and women so much. To be able to experience bringing a child into this world, if you’re lucky and fortunate enough to experience that, I would never ever take that for granted.”
Being private about her personal life may have been at the root.
She kept her relationship, courtship, marriage and pregnancy pretty private, but has opened a lot more since the documentary, to her very intimate and sensual “Beyonce” album, to the Lemonade album which many have hypothesized was autobiographical and about her marital struggles with Jay.
And now this time, she is being a lot more open about showing off her bump with not one, not two, but several nude and semi nude maternity portraits.
This week, her team also pushed out belly progression photos she took while pregnant with Blue, perhaps to head off new allegations and rumors before they start. Because her head is not in the photos, I’m not sure the suspicious will be convinced. They are certainly not stopping brand new allegations about this pregnancy either.
Oh well. The new photos are buzz-worthy, for sure.
The one that was released with the news is part of a session with famed Ethiopian-American photographer Awol Erizku, a Bronx, NY-raised graduate of Yale‘s Master of Fine Arts program. Not everyone could appreciate the eclectic purposefully gaudy look to the background and props (the car is part of a previous pop-up installation called “Ask the Dust“, PEOPLE reports), but it is signature to Erizku’s style. (by the looks of his other works) He says they are made up of the images that surrounding his upbringing in the Bronx.
Queen Bey accompanied the images from her photo album with the writings of another East Africa-born artist, Somali-British poet Warsan Shire. Her words, from a poem titled “I Have Three Hearts“, read:
“Mother is a cocoon where cells spark, limbs form, mother swells and stretches to protect her child, mother has one foot in this world and one foot in the next, mother, black venus.”
I agree with Quartz’ assessment, “that’s just how Beyoncé looks in these pictures, her pregnant body floating weightless amidst flowing fabric, her flower crowns undisturbed.
“Maternity photos will never be the same.”
Bustle mused: “Beyoncé’s latest photo album includes throwback shots of her pregnant with Blue Ivy followed by snapshots of her first daughter’s four years, all sticking with the rule of threes: She’s a family of three with Blue and Jay Z, and now she’s a three-hearted woman preparing for three children.”
The Atlanticinterviewed the Drake University professor who wrote a book about the celebrity baby bump watch craze. In the October 2015 book, Pregnant with Stars, Watching and Wanting the Celebrity Baby Bump (The Cultural Lives of Law),Renée Ann Cramer, an Associate Professor and Chair of Law, Politics and Society at Drake, examines the American fascination with, and judgment of, celebrity pregnancy.
The piece launches with Cramer’s response to Beyonce‘s twin pregnancy. Cramer gives her perspective that the celebrity bump watch phenomenon is part of a proverbial “pregnancy industrial complex.” Cramer analyzed Beyonce’s pregnancy with Blue Ivy in her book.
According to the description of Cramer’s book in Amazon, Kramer “exposes how our seemingly innocent interest in “baby bumps” actually reinforces troubling standards about femininity, race, and class, while increasing the surveillance and regulation of all women in our society.”
To do so, she compares media coverage of pregnant celebrities, including Jennifer Garner, Angelina Jolie, Beyoncé Knowles, Kristen Bell, M.I.A., Jodie Foster, and Mila Kunis, and then applies sociology pedagogy to criticize said media coverage.
Essentially, she blames bump watch articles for promoting unattainable post-baby bodies, something I’ve blogged about often over the past few years. But Cramer goes further. She actually makes a tremendous leap to link bump coverage with government control of women’s bodies, I suppose via social and legal regulations surrounding access to birth control and abortions, and the like.
It seems to me to be a tenuous connection to say “frivolous celebrity gossip” is part of a larger, and perhaps, covert strategy to control survey, commodification of and control women’s bodies.
I disagree.
I think pop culture and society’s obsession with celebrity pregnancy is just part of the admiration and hero-worship of stars, in general. It’s just among the newest aspect of celebrity life to become enamored with, nothing more. The media cover what the people want to see. And when we see them click more links on bump watch, guess what, we post more.
The people express interest in it and they click articles about baby bumps, and the gossip rags and blogs, including this one, report on what the people want. It’s symbiotic.
In the Atlantic article, Cramer makes racial distinctions in the coverage and suggests that pregnancies of women of color are hypersexualized and less favorable than of white celebrities.
As a person who has covered celebrities and monitored the other sites coverage, I question that assessment. The media coverage is the same for the most part, in my opinion.
What is different is how the pubic reacts. It may be different because a lot of members of the general population already view Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez, for example, as sexual people. These women are sexy and their performance on stage and their clothing is revealing and we talk a lot about their bodies as their bodies are part of their image, their craft and their public persona.
Mila Kunis and Jennifer Garner are not known for that.
Also, celebrities of color aren’t given that much mainstream gossip press that is why niche sites like this one, Black Celeb Kids and Latina magazine fill in the void and the coverage of celebrity pregnancy in our sites are usually more positive.
I do agree that societal views of pregnancy are shaped by what people see when they read media articles about celebrity pregnancies, but I am not wholly convinced that there is a connection with control over women’s bodies. Perhaps, I will read the book and see if there is more to the analysis but from the synopsis and the Atlantic interview, I’m not buying it.
Editor’s Note: I know. I know. Enough Beyonce coverage. Soon. I cannot help myself as I am a big fan. Now this….
It feels like the world stopped spinning on its axis for a moment after we found out Beyoncé is not only pregnant, but that she and Jay Z are expecting twins!
She’s already released a slew of gorgeous photos in honor of the exciting news, and now E! News has learned the whole process has been quite a “miracle.”
An insider tells us exclusively, “[Bey and Jay] have been trying for sometime, and it has not been very easy conceiving this time around, so when they did it was a miracle. They always wanted more kids, and they are doing really well as a couple so the timing is on point.”
As for Queen B’s health, our source explains, “Beyoncé is feeling OK. She had some morning sickness early on and her energy level is slower then usual, [but she] is taking good care of her body and has good doctors that are making sure she is on track.”
The rest of the family, including 5-year-old Blue Ivy, is ecstatic.
“Blue is excited to be a big sister,” our insider reveals. “And Jay Z has expressed his excitement to some of his very close friends.”
For now, the insider adds, “Jay Z has new music, and Beyoncé will take some time for herself now and after she has the babies.”
“We would like to share our love and happiness. We have been blessed two times over. We are incredibly grateful that our family will be growing by two, and we thank you for your well wishes,” she wrote.
The announcement broke Selena Gomez‘s record by becoming the most-liked Instagram ever.
Then, on Thursday, the excitement only continued when she released even more photos as a part of the announcement in which she’s seen posing node, sitting atop an old car and and swimming in a pool.
The insightful article also explored the world of Instagram baby swag moms who outfit their children in fashionable chic clothing, and get famous doing so.
Still, it was great to see the piece quoted an author who validated a concern I have with those baby swag Tumblr and IG pages:
In Kids and Branding in a Digital World, published last year the media theorist Barrie Gunter argues that the success of designer diffusion lines “play[s] on the idea that parents are the source of earliest social learning for their kids,” thereby encouraging parents to project their own brand valuations onto their children. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as Gunter hypothesized, unless children become “overly sensitised to a need to be seen as trendy and fashionable and where self-identity is centrally defined in terms of commercial brand associations.”
One small correction: The Fader piece states that luxury brands started getting into the children’s market beginning in 2010. But on the contrary, beginning in 2008, we began posting a biennial most expensive baby clothes list and Gucci, Chanel and Dior were on it back then too.
Big brands been in the rich babies game.
I did appreciate the inclusion of Australian-based designer Winnie Aoki who dresses Blue Ivy and other celebrity kids in her 5-figure costing originals that each take 300 hours for Aoki to complete.
Aoki, the site pens, was
responsible for the $2,000 dress Blue Ivy wore to her grandmother’s birthday, specializes in kid couture. Aoki crafts dresses from confectionery layers of tulle, sequins, and luxury fabrics under the label Mischka Aoki, named after her own 8-year-old daughter. The dresses, which can take up to 300 hours to craft, frequently come with five-digit price tags. According to her website, Aoki started the brand after she realized there weren’t any clothing options “good enough for her daughter”; for her, “clothes represent style and luxury at the same time.” While it may have been difficult to locate high-end designer clothing for children in 2008, when Mischka was born, the line’s explosive popularity — Aoki has dressed not just Blue Ivy, but North, Penelope Disick, and Suri — is an indicator of the steadily increasing desirability of luxury children’s wear.
It was a well written and researched article. You should check it out here!
The 2016 CFDA Fashion Awards went down at the Hammerstein Ballroom this past Monday, June 6, 2016 in New York City. Several of our blog alums were present including Beyonce who took home the Fashion Icon Award. She shined in a glittery box cut pin-striped suit with a wide bring black hat.
“I want to say thank you to every designer who works tirelessly to make people think they can write their own story. Y’all are fairy godmothers, magicians, sculptors, and sometimes even our therapist,” Bey said during her speech (via Vogue). “I encourage you to not forget this power you have or to take it lightly. We have the opportunity to contribute to a society where any girl can look at a billboard or magazine cover and see her own reflection. Soul has no color, no shape, no form. Just like all of your work, it goes far beyond what the eye can see. You have the power to change perception, to inspire and empower, and to show people how to embrace their complications, and see the flaws, and the true beauty and strength that’s inside all of us. Thank you so much for this incredible award, I’ll never forget this night. God bless you all. Thank you.”
Her daughter Blue Ivy walked the red carpet for the first time with her mom and dad before the event.
Other of our “Bellyitch Bumpwatch” alums spotted on the red carpet included: Heidi Klum in Rolan Mouret, Jennifer Hudson in Prabal Gurung, Alessandra Ambrosio in Michael Kors Collection, Olivia Wilde in Rosie Assoulin, Claire Danes in Calvin Klein Collection, Jourdan Dunn in Jonathan Simkhai, Ciara in Roberto Cavalli, Adriana Lima in Marc Jacobs and Alicia Silverstone and Selma Blair, both in Christian Siriano, who attended the event with his design muses.
