In 1991, Demi Moore appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair seven months pregnant and completely nude. In this photograph, taken by Annie Leibovitz, Moore stands with one hand splayed over her breast, the other cradled under the mound of her large, round belly. Her skin, hair and makeup glow. She faintly resembles the pregnant woman in Gustav Klimt’s 1903 painting, Hope I.
In Klimt’s artwork, the red-headed model stands sideways with her hands folded over her protruding pregnant belly. Her nude, rounded form is fully visible to the viewer. She wears flowers in her hair and looks directly out from her canvas. Klimt’s painting was censored at the time it was created, due to a perceived violation of decency standards. Almost ninety years later, Moore’s magazine cover caused a stir, echoing concerns about the decency of displaying a nude pregnant woman’s image in public. However, Moore’s cover was not censored.
Some people said Moore’s photo was a disgusting display. Others felt the cover was a daring, bold display of Moore’s pregnant beauty. Annie Leibovitz later said of the image, “It was a magazine cover. If it were a great portrait, she wouldn’t be covering her breasts.” In 1992, Demi Moore told the Houston Chronicle the shoot made her “feel glamorous, beautiful, and more free about [her] body.”
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When Moore’s magazine cover was released, I was a twenty-two-year-old newlywed who wondered how Moore had developed such a freedom within herself that she felt comfortable showing her pregnant body to the world. I wasn’t an overly modest person—I wore a bikini at the beach and shorts around town because they felt comfortable on my body—but I did not have the confidence to shed every stitch of clothing and pose nude for anyone. And I certainly couldn’t imagine doing it while pregnant.
Two years later, I would remember Moore’s words about feeling free and glamorous when I became pregnant with my first child. My pregnancy was completely normal, and the baby and I were healthy. But I hated the experience of being pregnant. I hated that my body had been hijacked by the baby growing inside me. I hated feeling tired, thirsty, hungry, and queasy. My body was a barge that I hoisted behind the steering wheel to commute each day, hefted during exercise, and shored with pillows to sleep. I couldn’t understand how Moore had enjoyed the experience.
Moore said at the time she posed for Annie Leibovitz, “Pregnancy agrees with me. I feel comfortable.”
This baffled me. “How could anyone say they’re comfortable being pregnant?” I asked my mother.
“Oh, I loved being pregnant—to just relax with my body.” Mom stretched out the word loved as she rubbed her palm over her middle-aged midsection, remembering her pregnant body years ago.
“Ha! What did you find relaxing about it?” I shook my head in disbelief.
“I didn’t have to worry about how I looked.”
Hearing Mom say there was a time that she didn’t fret about her appearance came as a surprise. Mom had been concerned about appearances, particularly related to weight, for as long as I could remember. And she worried about my appearance along with her own.
When I was in elementary school, I gained weight just before going through puberty. I complained to Mom about my inner thigh skin sticking together when wearing shorts. I asked her to buy me new shorts that fit without causing my skin to chafe.
Mom said, “I don’t think you need new shorts. You can sprinkle powder on your thighs to stop them from sticking together. But to stop it from happening again, I think you could eat a little less. Whenever I gain a few pounds, my thighs stick together.” Mom was a seemingly healthy woman—not thin like Twiggy, but not zaftig like Mama Cass either. She was a modern woman’s size 10. Looking back now, I think her assessment bordered on some sort of body dysmorphia, or at the very least, disordered eating related to her near-constant effort to reach a certain number on the scale.
When I was an elementary-aged girl, my young body was changing because puberty was approaching. Sure, I gained a few pounds, but I was not fat. Yet in that moment, I took Mom’s advice and sprinkled powder on my thighs, ate less, and thus began my own decades-long relationship with dieting that I paused while pregnant and happily abandoned after menopause. Mom was right about the powder. It provided instant relief. But looking back now, I’m sorry for the missed opportunity for me to understand my own body earlier in life. I don’t know that it would have led to the same kind of freedom that Demi Moore had, but it would have been a moment to appreciate my body, rather than develop discomfort with it.
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In the first trimester of my first pregnancy in 1992, I bought a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting and subsequently became worried about everything inside my body. The authors recommended homemade, unprocessed foods, and the recipes had ingredients I wasn’t familiar with. The authors were adamant about not eating sugar, not consuming caffeine, and not taking medication as a way to protect my baby’s health. Even my own prenatal doctors didn’t have such strict rules. The book felt too far removed from my lifestyle. It wasn’t that I wanted to binge sugar and coffee. Rather, it was that I didn’t want to follow a strict diet that included food no one else in my family wanted to eat. It felt too much like my adolescence again. I continued to ask Mom about her pregnancy and postpartum experiences, hoping she might give insight into my own experience. I told her, “Feeling the baby move is a weird sensation. Something’s moving from inside me, like worms or aliens. I’m not comfortable at all.”
Mom replied, “I loved the feeling of you and your brother moving around inside me.”
Mom’s joyful memory didn’t help me resolve my discomfort.
When I held my newborn daughter for the first time in April 1993, I gazed into her dark, liquid eyes and forgot about the alien-worm-barge feelings that had possessed me for nine months. But the moment did not lead to an epiphany of bodily self-love.
In the weeks following my daughter’s birth, I still felt estrangement with my soft, still-enlarged belly and milk-heavy breasts. I again went to Mom, this time about the aftermath of giving birth. She again had no advice that I could adopt as my own. She loved the freedom of not being accountable for the size of her waist and reveled in the fullness of her previously small breasts. I wanted to feel freedom with my body, too, but I didn’t agree with Mom’s postpartum views.
I was frustrated that I did not know anyone who felt like me. I was at odds with my own body, even though it had created a life and done exactly what it was biologically capable of doing. It would take eight weeks for the organs that had been displaced during pregnancy to float back where they belonged in my abdomen. It would take months for me to regain my muscle tone and strength. I’d been little prepared for pregnancy, and even less prepared for the postpartum process of recovery.
Part of my struggle was that I gained an excessive amount of weight during this first pregnancy. A typical weight gain during pregnancy is twenty-five to thirty-five pounds. I gained seventy-three pounds. I had eaten too many rich foods while pregnant and I did not maintain an exercise routine. I became obese in nine months. When I told Mom that I was frustrated about all the weight I’d gained, she said she, too, had gained a lot of weight while she was pregnant and not to worry, it would come off with dieting.
Two weeks after giving birth, I bought a cookbook filled with low-fat recipes. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the muffins made with applesauce instead of oil. And I liked the simple process of cooking boneless, skinless chicken breasts and organic vegetables. I grocery shopped and meal-prepped on weekends. I began taking daily walks, pushing my baby in her stroller, and enjoying the fresh air.
Eight weeks after having my baby, I returned to work wearing borrowed clothes from my aunt until I could fit into my slim pencil skirts and tailored slacks again. I pumped breast milk during morning and afternoon breaks in a bathroom stall on the second floor of my office building. My female coworkers knew the sound of my breast pump and did their best to ignore the swoosh swoosh of the pump while they peed in the stall next to me. I stored the fresh milk in a cooler underneath my desk and passed the full bottles to my daughter’s day care provider each day.
I began thinking in terms of what my body could do, sort of like an athlete who trained for a race, rather than how I looked. I began jogging during my lunch hour. At first, I gasped for air as I lumbered down the country roads near my office building in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I used the rural mailboxes at the edge of each driveway as markers of how far I’d run. With each house sitting on several acres, the boxes were spread far apart. By the end of the summer, I was jogging the mailbox equivalent of two and a half miles each day. I looked forward to my lunch runs as a way to relieve stress and renew my energy each afternoon. I began lifting light weights to strengthen my muscles. I cooked and baked from my new cookbook with specific caloric intake and nourishment in mind. I reached my pre-pregnancy weight in nine months.
My body had changed in more ways that just how much I weighed, though. I had more bicep strength to carry my baby. I had more stamina to play and crawl with her as she grew. I began to feel in command of my body in a way that I had not felt before. I enjoyed what my body could do. I liked the freedom of how my body moved, and I didn’t spend as much time as I used to thinking about how I appeared (beyond getting showered and dressed each morning). I slept better, too. I finally felt comfortable with myself inside and out.
Mom was right about the fact that I would lose the pregnancy weight. But her outlook was limiting. She hated exercise of all kinds, including low-impact gardening. She preferred reading magazines to playing games or taking walks with me or my daughter. These things limited the ways I could connect with Mom.
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Interviewed twenty years after her magazine cover, Demi Moore said, “As more time goes by, I understand what an impact [the cover] had on women…[we now have] permission to embrace ourselves in a pregnant state.” In 2017, Serena Williams posed for the cover of Vanity Fair in a manner similar to Demi Moore’s 1991 cover image. It was a quarter of a century later, and much had changed in terms of what was considered an acceptable and decent appearance for a pregnant woman. Rae Alexandra pointed out in her 2017 commentary on Moore’s cover titled “How Demi Moore’s 1991 Photoshoot Changed the Game for Pregnant Celebrities” that in between Moore and Williams, there were many other celebrity women who proudly posed with their pregnant bellies exposed. “Today, bumps are to be celebrated and shown off; not hidden away under loose maternity wear. Moore’s example emboldened women to retain their sense of self while on the road to motherhood in a way that had been taboo for generations before.”
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I think the difference between my own feelings and those of Demi Moore, Serena Williams and other women who have joyfully displayed their pregnant form is that they have a sense of confidence that I only felt after I recovered from my pregnancies. I endured pregnancy four times because I wanted my four babies. I was relatively healthy during all four pregnancies; I delivered four healthy babies; but I did not enjoy how I felt while pregnant at all.
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In 2018, Chrissy Teigen posted a postpartum image of herself in hospital-issued mesh underwear. The Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and actress showed her body in a disposable garment designed to hold a large menstrual pad between a new mother’s legs. In the image, we cannot see Teigen’s pad. There is no visible flow of blood that must exit her body. There is no graphic content. It is an image that simply reveals the soft swell of her post-partem curves as she holds her newborn. In the caption, she jokes that the fabric of her underwear resembles produce packaging for Korean pears. In this image, Chrissy Teigen captures the complicated beauty of new motherhood. It’s messy and humbling. The post is similar to Moore’s because it is a moment of honesty and freedom captured by the camera.
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In 1996 when I returned to work six weeks after my second daughter’s birth, I had a humbling experience of my own. Sitting at a conference table with my mostly male colleagues, I felt the familiar sensation of breast milk leaking. My lactation hormones overreacted when I was asked about my new baby. It’s a common problem for new mothers when our hormones are still in postpartum fluctuation. I crossed my arms over my leaking breasts to stop the flow of milk and waited until the sensation subsided. I hugged my jacket over the milk spots and carried on as if nothing had happened.
I did not want to call attention to the truth that I was an exhausted mom who had barely recovered from childbirth. I missed my newborn terribly: She was safe and secure with her daycare provider, but I longed to be with her. I shared these feelings with my husband and close friends only. If social media had existed, I would not have shared like Teigen did. I was too afraid that I’d be judged as an unprofessional employee or as an inattentive mother. I was afraid I would give the wrong appearance.
I never reached a point where I felt I wanted to pose nude while pregnant, but I had my own version of freedom when my son (my third baby) was born in 1999. I openly breastfed him while sitting in the church pew during Sunday services at our Episcopal church. I didn’t care if someone saw the flesh of my breast or the flash of my nipple when my baby unlatched. I had reached the point where I was comfortable existing in my body without worrying about how I appeared to others. It was an earned moment after enduring a pregnancy scare.
During my son’s first trimester, I had severe morning sickness that lasted ten weeks. I lost weight. My doctor monitored me carefully to make sure I wasn’t dehydrated and that the baby and I did not have any other complications. It was a moment when weight loss was a negative sign, and perhaps even a dangerous sign.
My mother had nothing to advise on my condition because to her, weight loss was always preferred over weight gain, even while pregnant.
By week eleven, I improved and was able to stomach bland foods. I gradually gained weight. I found resources to help me know how much to eat and what kind of exercise I could do to gain an optimal amount of weight. Ultimately, I gained thirty-eight pounds, and had a much easier recovery than I’d had when I gained too much weight in my first pregnancy.
When I was pregnant with my youngest daughter in 2004, I gained weight rapidly, even though I ate and exercised like I had while pregnant with my son. At thirty-five, I was considered to be a woman of “advanced maternal age.” It was possible that the weight gain was simply a normal metabolic change related to my age while pregnant. Then again, maybe I just ate a little more than I thought I was eating. Whatever the reason, the outcome was the same: I began to feel anxious about my weight, and my appearance. I worried that I’d become obese, that all the work I’d done to care for my body would be ruined with this pregnancy. Each time I went to the doctor for a well-check, I cried when the nurse weighed me. About halfway through my pregnancy, the doctor wrote in my chart Do not let the patient see her weight. He told me it was okay to stop worrying—my blood pressure was fine, my glucose levels were fine, and the baby growing inside me was fine. For the remainder of my pregnant well-checks, when I stepped on the scale, the nurse told me to turn and face away from the scale’s balance beam while she calculated and recorded my weight.
Afterward, I learned that I had gained forty-two pounds during my last pregnancy. It wasn’t that far-off from my previous pregnancy. Yet, I felt different this time around. I felt more fragile, less confident, and more anxious. It reminded me of the feelings I’d had with my first pregnancy. In time, I rested, ate well and exercised. I began to feel strong again. I lost the baby weight, and life went on.
In almost direct inverse proportion, Mom gained weight during that same time period. She refused to wear any sleeveless shirts or dresses because they revealed too much arm fat. While I became more at ease with myself, Mom became more uncomfortable.
It was a juxtaposition that never realigned.
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During the NFL’s 2023 Superbowl halftime show, singer and songwriter Rihanna revealed her pregnancy in spectacular fashion. Standing on a raised platform above the field, she was surrounded by a team of dancers in all-white flight suits while standing out in her all-red attire. Viewers could see her clearly when, within the first twenty-five seconds of her performance, she opened her suit to reveal a sculpted red bra over a tight red catsuit over her rounded pregnant belly. She looked spectacular.
By the time of Rihanna’s performance and reveal, Mom had passed away and I was a fifty-four-year-old mother of four and grandmother of two. I had already completed the hot flashes of menopause and felt nothing but relief that I would never have to be pregnant again. Seeing Rihanna’s performance reminded me of the confidence and security Demi Moore, Serena Williams, Chrissy Teigen and others showed when they celebrated their pregnancies publicly. It made me feel like maybe there has been a change in public scrutiny over women’s bodies; and that there is less stigma around the changes in a woman’s body when she’s pregnant, or when she doesn’t conform to the beauty standard of the moment. It is also a reminder to let go of anxiety over appearances, and to let go of restrictions and expectations about what a body should look like, as opposed to what a body can do. Maybe all of this is the the path to more women feeling comfortable with themselves while pregnant, and less concerned about appearances. It’s what I want for my own children—for them to feel glamorous, free and beautiful, just like Moore had felt.
I wished Mom were alive to see that Superbowl moment, so we could talk about body confidence.
When Mom died two years before Rihanna’s performance, the cause on Mom’s death certificate was Failure to Thrive. It’s a medical term for a general condition when a body can no longer sustain itself. Just before Mom went into hospice, she told me, “I lost another ten pounds this week.” She looked frail, like a whisper might blow her over. I was glad her eyes had clouded over in the year before, that she could no longer see her reflection in the mirror. With her tussled white hair and graying skin, she asked me how she looked.
I was slightly horrified that my mother was shrinking away from me, but I recognized the need to be what Mom hadn’t been for me. I said, “You look beautiful, Mom.”
When I went through menopause in 2020, I gained twenty-five pounds. It was a combination of a sedentary lifestyle during covid and a natural slowing of my metabolism from not maintaining muscle mass. I’m still fluctuating on the scale, my cholesterol is no longer low, and I worry about weight in a different way now. I don’t worry because of my appearance (I think I look feminine and healthy), but I do worry about the increased risk for chronic diseases like high blood pressure and high cholesterol. I worry about becoming frail like my mother. So, I’ve been trying to cook lower fat meals and eat more fruits and vegetables like I did after my babies were born. I started running again. I’m only up to two miles at a time, but I’m making my body’s health a priority, and that feels good. If I lose weight, it’s not because I don’t like myself, or because I’m anxious about my appearance. It’s because I want to be healthy and whole. I don’t think I’ll ever pose for nude photos, though. That’s not a necessary part of bodily freedom for me. But I might pose in my shorts during my next 5K race to celebrate what my body can do.
Works Consulted:
Alexandra, Rae. 2017. “How Demi Moore’s 1991 Photoshoot Changed the Game for Pregnant Celebrities | KQED.” June 28, 2017.
Anne. 2011. “Anne’s Review of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” January 24, 2011.
Bellefonds, Colleen de. 2022. Medically Reviewed by James Greenberg, M.D. “How Organs Move During Pregnancy to Make Room for a Baby.” What To Expect. September 12, 2022.
Campbell, Naomi, dir. 2021. Demi Moore Surprise Fendi Runway Appearance in Paris and Inside Out | No Filter with Naomi. No Filter with Naomi. Paris, France. Accessed November 14, 2023.
Collins, Nancy. 1991. “Demi’s Big Moment | Vanity Fair.” Vanity Fair | The Complete Archive. August 1991. Accessed April 4, 2024.
Eisenberg, Arlene, and Heidi Eisenberg Merkoff. 1984. What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Workman.
“Hope I.” Gustav Klimt. 1903. National Gallery of Canada. 2024. Accessed April 3, 2024.
Mamo, Heron. 2023. “Rihanna Super Bowl Halftime Show Most Watched All Time.” May 2, 2023.
Rihanna. NFL, dir. 2023. Rihanna’s FULL Apple Music Super Bowl LVII Halftime Show.
“What to Know About Organ Displacement During Pregnancy.” n.d. Accessed April 21, 2024.
Photo by Filipp Romanovski on Unsplash
