2017 seems to be the year of celebrity twin pregnancies.
Beyonce announced her pregnancy in a bold and beautiful fashion. Her pregnancy photos broke the internet and were all the rage for almost a week. Everyone wondered what her pregnancy would mean for her performances at The Grammys and Coachella . While she did step down from Coachella, she stopped the world with her Grammy performance. Her elegance and poise as a mother had all of us acknowledging the pain that our mothers went through for us and appreciate them all that much more by showing that just because she was pregnant it won’t stop her from being one of the best female performers in the music industry.
However, the media has been using her pregnancy to not focus on topics we should be discussing. Instead of discussing the racism that still exists in The Grammys to this day we were all talking about Beyonce’s performance, and while her performance was incredible and she is an excellent black musician who deserves all the attention she is getting, we only briefly talked about what needed to be called. The power of the media as a whistle blower to the problems that do exist in the U.S. have been neglected for far too long. Instead of focusing on what needs to be said, we’re talking about a pregnancy instead of what needs to be discussed.
Shortly after Beyonce’s pregnancy announcement Amal Clooney, a human right’s lawyer, announced her pregnancy with twins. Not as publicized as Beyonce however it did have people talking, because afterwards Madonna adopted twins. Beyonce seemed to have started a domino chain reaction of announcing twins, and the media was all over it.
Again though, instead of focusing on what was happening with the racism at the oscars, they were talking about the pregnancies. As if giving a few awards to a few movies will end racism in the film industry. Instead of acknowledging their mistakes of the past and advocating against racism openly and proudly, they denied their previous racism and put a few awards over it, which the media again neglected to talk about.
This past week, Amal Clooney spoke in front of the UN against ISIS, but the only thing anyone seemed to be concerned with was her baby bump. The press doesn’t seem to care anymore about issues and to speak against what seems to be too hard to talk about. Instead of talking about what matters we take the irrelevant minor details to great lengths and completely brush aside the injustices, Amal said herself in front of the UN “History will judge us, and there will be no excuse” Because their pregnancies won’t matter in 10 years, but the condition that we have left the world for their, and our own, will. The fact that we keep ignoring all that is happening over small things like this needs to stop and only then can we get to a better place for all of us.
It’s incredible that all these women are doing such a phenomenal job even while they’re pregnant but using their pregnancy as an excuse to not talk about what is happening needs to end.
