ways to announce pregnancy on social media

Printed in the 1880s, the poster gave rise to the common image of Mami Wata. She's also interested in her own beauty to the point of being vain.” Chromolithograph of a Samoan snake charmer.

She is connected to water, says Nicholas Mirzoeff, an NYU professor of media, culture, and communication, “but also to money: Some would say to capitalism. Mami Wata is a water spirit celebrated throughout much of Africa and the African diaspora. Later in the essay, we see Beyoncé submerged in sparkling, foamy water, another nod to Venus, who was born from sea foam.īut it also nods to the next figure in Beyoncé’s list of influences: Mami Wata. Her hands are placed deliberately against her half-naked body in a way that both frames her pregnant belly and echoes Venus’s hands covering her genitalia - not, as Johnson wrote, out of prudishness, but in an acknowledgment of divine power. Beyoncé’s hair is falling in the long flowing curls that Botticelli loved to paint, and the veil cascading past her hips echoes the lines of Venus’s hair. They form an arc over Beyoncé’s head that echoes the subtle arc over Venus’s head, formed by her mantle and the leaves on the right and the edges of the clouds on the left. There are those flowers again, which represent fecundity and female genitalia, like the flowers wafting on the wind towards Venus. There is an almost tangible sense of divine power when you look at this image.”Īnd the lead image of Beyoncé’s photo essay, which shows her half-naked, surrounded by flowers, draped in silky fabric, is - to use the technical term - Botticelli as fuck. “She preserves a portion of modesty not because this is a prudish painting, but because the totally revealed nudity of a god might blind or madden the beholder. She’s an ideal of bodily, sexual, feminine beauty, and an immensely powerful one at that: “Her nakedness is genuinely divine,” writes Jonathan Jones in the Guardian. Wikimedia Commons/ Dcoetzeeīotticelli shows Venus, the Roman goddess of erotic love, emerging from the sea foam where she was born, while winds blow roses into her hair and a handmaiden waits to drape her in silk. “The Birth of Venus” by Sandro Botticelli, 1483 to 1485.

And the most iconic painting of Venus, the one you’ve probably seen before, is Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” painted in the late 15th century. On Beyoncé’s website, all of the photographs are named variations on “B-VENUS,” a not-so-subtle hint that Queen Bey’s about to reference some Venus imagery. Beyoncé has taken on the power and the purity of the Virgin Mary’s iconography, but she insists on the power of her body, as well.

She’s using all of the props and codes of the traditional Madonna and child imagery here, but there’s no escaping the physical fact of her pregnant body. It’s rare, but not impossible, to see any image of the Virgin Mary with her belly swollen by pregnancy: It’s a fleshy image, and the Virgin Mary is supposed to be beyond flesh.īut there’s Beyoncé, gazing down, pregnant, draped in a Madonna-like veil, her ruffled panties Virgin Mary-blue. The Virgin Mary is usually draped in a blue veil and gazing modestly, adoringly down the baby Jesus stares solemnly out at the viewer. “Madonna and Child with Saint John the Baptist,” Filippino Lippi, circa 1502-1504. In the Western canon, when you put a woman with a baby on canvas, you’re usually painting a Madonna and Christ child. Let’s take a look at some of what Beyoncé and her photographers are referencing and how they’re doing it. When Beyoncé announced that she’s pregnant with twins - via an Instagram post she then followed up with a sumptuous visual essay on her website - she was taking control of her narrative in the way that only Beyoncé can: She made the announcement on her own terms, through her own channels, instead of going through the intermediary of a magazine or news outlet.Īnd, in collaboration with a number of photographers, including Awol Erizku, she filled the announcement with references and allusions that position her firmly at the center of a long visual tradition of mothers and of womanhood.

Ways to announce pregnancy on social media