The Left said Vice President JD Vance was weird when he was on the campaign trail. Now it’s obsessed with his wife’s pregnant belly. That’s weird.
Usha Vance appeared on the most recent episode of “Storytime with the Second Lady” wearing a slightly off-the-shoulder, fitted coral maternity dress, and the chief fashion critic of The New York Times wrote an article about her clothing choice.
The article blew up across the internet last week.
It didn’t note the fact that Vance has continued attending international functions while in the most uncomfortable trimester of pregnancy. Nor did it note that she has done so in high heels.
It was an in-depth analysis of the politics behind why Vance wore a “stretchy” dress that “hugs her stomach.”
Surely it wasn’t because when a woman is eight months pregnant, most dresses—even maternity dresses—fit her stomach snugly.
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No, the author, Vanessa Freidman, speculated that Vance, Karoline Leavitt, and Katie Miller have given “literal shape to the pronatalist movement” and that they are presenting an image of the administration’s support for family and fertility through their pregnancies.
Their vehicles for propaganda? Their own bodies. Allegedly, the “body-aware” dresses and photos of the three women posing with their hands on their bellies are part of the White House’s agenda to promote having children.
The article totally ignores the people and relationships involved in a pregnancy, as if the only reason why a woman would put a hand on her pregnant belly would be to direct people’s eyes to her stomach so that they too would jump on the baby bandwagon.
We cannot forget that public figures are also human. Even if you disagree politically with these women in the White House, it’s unjust to overlook the physical and relational factors influencing their lives and to treat them as mere propaganda machines embodying their husbands’ political ideals.
Maybe, like any other woman, Vance likes wearing clothes that are flattering and don’t swallow her in yards of fabric. Maybe it’s because when you’re eight months pregnant and your waist is approximately 40 inches in circumference, it’s hard to hide your stomach or ignore that you have a basketball-sized belly.
Or maybe she put her hand atop her belly when deplaning in China because within her belly is her son. Physical touch is part of the mother-child relationship, just like it’s part of any other relationship.
In fact, putting a hand on her belly when she steps off the plane is not that different from walking into an event holding hands with the vice president.
No one would say in that situation that the Vances are pushing a pro-marriage agenda. It’s normal for a husband and wife to hold hands, and everyone accepts that.
But it’s also normal for a mother to place a hand protectively on her pregnant belly, or to wear clothes that show she’s pregnant. So, why the press?
Perhaps it’s because although Vance is the second lady of the United States in a Republican administration, she’s treating pregnancy like it’s completely natural—which it is. It’s almost like she’s getting hate because she’s not “weird” about being pregnant.
There really is no particular standard for how the second lady should dress if she’s pregnant, because, as the New York Times noted, the last time a second lady was publicly pregnant was in 1870. And the most recent first lady who was pregnant in the White House was Jackie Kennedy in the 1960s.
So the only standard for the second lady to follow is current maternity style.
Yet when she wears a dress that the fashion critic says, “mirrors much of modern style,” she receives attention for wearing typical 2026 maternity clothing and for not imitating the smock-style outfits that Kennedy wore.
It seems that the second lady’s maternity style is more with the times than the fashion critic expected. Vance is not mimicking Kennedy’s maternity dresses of six decades ago.
In fact, she’s wearing the attire of most pregnant women across America. Vance posted on X in response to the New York Times article that she bought her dress from Old Navy, the popular American retail store with over 1,000 locations in the United States. And with a mother’s eye for saving, she paid only $8.75 for the $50 dress that had gone on sale.
Plus, Vance is wearing dresses with similar styles to what she has worn throughout her time as second lady. Just because she’s pregnant doesn’t mean she’s going to stop dressing in attractive clothes that suit her taste.
And although she’s the second lady of the United States, she’s not going to hide her pregnancy like she’s ashamed of having a child. Sorry—it’s not the 1800s anymore. We don’t disguise pregnancies with confinement periods.
This is why feminists originally fought: so that women could have the same rights and public engagement as men without giving up their feminine dignity.
That’s what Usha Vance is embodying.
There’s nothing weird about the second lady wearing a fitted maternity dress from a popular retail store while hosting a read-aloud of “Winnie the Pooh.” In fact, it’s completely normal.
And that seems to be why the Left is upset about it.
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