Rihanna Made History as the First Pregnant Person to Perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show
Rihanna‘s performance at the Super Bowl LVII halftime show reminded fans everywhere of her icon status and furthered her legacy as a woman who can do just about everything. Her performance doubled as a pregnancy reveal, as her baby bump was visible and her team confirmed after the show. By taking the stage with a bun in the oven, Rihanna did something no other artist has done before.
Rihanna revealed her pregnancy during her Super Bowl halftime show
Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show was unlike any other before, with several platforms floating above the field. Rihanna, dressed in red from head to toe, was strapped in for safety, as were her dancers on the other platforms. As the camera panned away from her face to start the show, some fans immediately noticed that her stomach was looking bigger than normal. The singer rubbed her stomach, leading to increased speculation that she’s pregnant.
Representatives for Rihanna confirmed after the Super Bowl that it was indeed a baby bump, and that Rihanna is pregnant with her second child. Some likened the moment to Beyoncé’s revealing her pregnancy with Blue Ivy Carter back in 2011, when she ended her performance of “Love on Top” at the MTV Video Music Awards with a literal mic drop and by opening up her jacket and rubbing her growing belly.
Rihanna is the first person to perform at the Super Bowl while pregnant
Once news broke that Rihanna is indeed pregnant, many found it to be a perfect example of women being able to do anything, even headline a Super Bowl halftime show while they’re expecting.
Axios pointed out that Rihanna became the first pregnant person to headline the Super Bowl halftime show with her performance. She’s also the first female billionaire to perform at the halftime show.
Rihanna hinted before she took the stage that she was “thinking of bringing someone” on stage in an interview with Nate Burleson. Her plans for a special guest were presumably about her unborn child, now that the world knows who she was talking about.
“There’s something that just happens where you feel like you … can do anything, and the Super Bowl is one of the biggest stages in the world,” Rihanna said in a news conference ahead of the Super Bowl. “So as scary as that was, because I haven’t been on stage in seven years, there’s something exhilarating about the challenge of it all. And it’s important for me to do this; this year it’s important for representation and it’s important for my son to see that.”
She had her first child in May 2022
Rihanna and A$AP Rocky have been romantically linked since 2020, and their relationship has grown strong in the time since then. In May 2022, the two artists welcomed their first child together, a son whose name has yet to be revealed. With her becoming pregnant again less than a year after giving birth, both of Rihanna’s children will be close in age.
