August 6, 2018

Beyoncé Discusses Difficult Childbirth and Embrace of Her New Body

The singer gets candid in her history-making September issue for Vogue.

On Monday, Vogue unveiled its September issue featuring Beyoncé who, as reported, had “unprecedented control” over her images and accompanying interview. The history-making issue, which features the first black photographer to shoot the magazine’s cover, offers a handful of candid personal details from the notoriously private singer, including her thoughts on her heritage and the significance of lifting young and diverse artists in creative fields.

“If people in powerful positions continue to hire and cast only people who look like them, sound like them, come from the same neighborhoods they grew up in,” she told Clover Hope, “they will never have a greater understanding of experiences different from their own.”

Beyoncé also shared her experience with an emergency C-section during the birth of her twins, Rumi and Sir, and the dramatic shift the difficult delivery caused in her body. She also revealed that she had suffered toxemia and was on bed rest for over a month. “After the C-section, my core felt different. It had been major surgery,” she wrote in a personal essay. “Some of your organs are shifted temporarily, and in rare cases, removed temporarily during delivery.”

“I am not sure everyone understands that. I needed time to heal, to recover.”

And with refreshing honesty, Beyoncé described her acceptance of her new body, one she described in Vogue as “curvier” and proudly featuring a “FUPA.” (For the uninitiated, that’s the acronym for Fat-Upper-Pussy-Area.) Let the body-positive quote serve as unofficial permission for women to appreciate their Beyoncé-approved FUPA.

To this day my arms, shoulders, breasts, and thighs are fuller. I have a little mommy pouch, and I’m in no rush to get rid of it. I think it’s real. Whenever I’m ready to get a six-pack, I will go into beast zone and work my ass off until I have it. But right now, my little FUPA and I feel like we are meant to be.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate