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.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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