Why Don’t We Stop Comparing Pregnant Women or Women in General?
Avowed Beyonce Stan, Renaissance ticketholder (per his own bio), and clout chaser, @Mediumsizemeech sent off a series of disastrous tweets shaming the pregnant and recently postpartum Rihanna and was rightfully cooked better than my mother’s famous mac and cheese.
Actor Devon Sawa, famous for his starring role in the Final Destination franchise, even went so far as to rightfully call him a, “jealous bitch.” In these tweets, he continuously disparaged Rihanna for a lackluster performance while also comparing her to Beyonce, who was, in fact, not pregnant during her halftime performance and was also not recently postpartum. He also posted a picture of Beyonce performing while sitting in a chair, while pregnant, during an even shorter performance than the halftime show as a comparison because sitting in a chair is definitely serving extreme choreo.
Was the expectation that Rihanna do a somersault and use her belly to do a spin on?
People are absolutely allowed to have favorites and opinions on people whom they do and do not like but going out of your way to lambast a pregnant woman who has not given a full show in over half a decade is giving tall but not grown-up. I get it. Rihanna and Beyonce being the two biggest female performers on the planet means they are going to be compared, but not only is there room to be fans of both but there is room for both to co-exist without the comparison of what their bodies are doing under a stress so immense that it literally kills women. Additionally, not saying men do not get compared, but at the rate that female performers do, it is just astounding. Anyone who listens to rap can tell you that you are allowed to be fans of many male rappers, but when it comes to female rap, you kinda have to pick a side. And honestly, not only is it shameful but another example of patriarchy limiting spaces for women.
I am a self-avowed Rihanna N-gger navy captain. And just because she is more of my cup of tea than Beyonce, does not mean that I am not able to recognize why other people thirst for her. She’s amazing and so is Rihanna, just in a different way. I love Rihanna down, and I can understand that she’s never been a top vocalist or even a dancer, but clearly, she’s hypnotic and charismatic, and that is what people come for.
She did not get to be where she is in life without people thoroughly enjoying what she has done for years. What do you gain from pitting two women against each other whose own pregnancies probably did not mirror the other(s)? So why would their pregnancies mirror someone else’s? Like, be for real. Pregnancy at any economic level is hard and Black maternal mortality is not changed by economic status. Hell, Beyonce and Serena Williams both recount harrowing ordeals when delivering their children. Vigorous movement during pregnancy can not only be difficult but can also be dangerous.
Give people a f-cking break.
I imagine Rihanna was slated to perform at the Super Bowl before she even got pregnant. Was she wrong to get pregnant during that time? That’s a crazy thing to even ponder because whether it was accidental or not, what would the expectation be that she should not perform or that she should terminate her pregnancy in order to give Beyonce’s most vicious stans something to continue to talk about?
This is another reason why women are quiet about their pregnancies because so many people are loud and wrong about them.