The moment we found out Rihanna was performing at this year’s Super Bowl, it stopped being about the game. Super Bowl? This was the Fenty Bowl. It wasn’t about the game. It was about the music. The makeup. The lewks. And Sunday night, while history was being made with two Black starting quarterbacks on the field for the first time, Rih Rih stole the show in only the way she could.
As we all waited with bated breath to witness the greatness; to hear new music and jam to old — to see the singer take the stage for the first time in more years than we could count — Rihanna appeared on our television screens donning a red Loewe jumpsuit and custom Alaïa coat. And the most important accessory and surprise special guest: a proudly displayed baby bump.
With a laundry list of expectations for the performance of a lifetime, for a new album, for new Fenty products, and more, Rihanna got on the world’s biggest stage and revealed she is pregnant with her second baby.
As a mother of a two-year-old who is currently contemplating getting pregnant again, Rih Rih’s choice to stand on stage and show off her bump showed me I don’t have to choose between my family and my career. For the past few months, I’ve been doing mental math trying to figure out the perfect time to get pregnant again. When is a good time to step away? How much would I be able to get done in 40 weeks? Will I be able to take enough time off? Will having more children make me less successful at work?
Rihanna stood on a glass stage hundreds of feet in the air showing off her belly and singing “bitch better have my money.” A pregnant Black woman demanding the world pay what they owe her. Her gesture flies in the face of expectations and assumptions of what pregnant women are capable of. She could have chosen to sit the Super Bowl out, she could have stayed home with her beautiful son. But instead, she showed millions of viewers that women — especially expectant mothers — can do whatever they damn well, please.
As the internet processed the news, social media was flooded with questions of whether or not we’d get another album and the overwhelming assumption that we wouldn’t because the “Umbrella” singer would be too busy having a baby to give us new music. But the idea that a woman is all of a sudden incapable of working because she’s chosen to expand her family is ludicrous. Pregnancy does not stop your life, it does not kill your ambition. And if Rihanna made any statement Sunday night, it was just that — proving to the world that women can choose whatever path in their personal and professional lives at whatever pace they choose. We are so often told we have to pick one over the other, but Rihanna made it clear tonight that we can write our own rules.
As she opened the show, Rih Rih demanded we pay her what we owe her. And we owe her the freedom to have more children. Or not. To make more music. Or not. We owe it to every woman to let her be her fullest self both personally and professionally. We owe women the freedom to be ambitious in any area of life without our limits.