Although she didn’t walk yesterday’s socially distanced MTV VMAs red carpet, Katy Perry definitely had the occasion on her mind when she shared a candid postpartum selfie just days after giving birth to her and Orlando Bloom’s daughter, Daisy Dove Bloom.
Sharing the snap to her Instagram Stories, Perry’s tongue-in-cheek photo showed the singer standing in front of a mirror in a nursing bra and underwear with the VMAs gif above her.
“Hair n makeup by @exhaustion,” she wrote, cheekily playing on the way celebrities credit ‘who they’re wearing’.
Adding an extra layer of playfulness to the whole thing, her song “Not The End Of The World” could be heard playing over the top of the Story.
While Perry has never been shy about showing the not-so-glamorous parts of her life, particularly during her pregnancy, postpartum bodies have long been relegated to being almost ‘invisible’, and aren’t celebrated until they have ‘bounced back’ (an antiquated idea that deserves to be disrupted), which makes the image all the more powerful.
Moreover, the photo comes mere days after Perry gave birth, a time when most women do still look pregnant as the uterus is still shrinking back down after having been expanded over nine months.
And it’s not the only move Perry has made that supports new mothers. On August 27, Perry and Bloom announced the arrival of their daughter Daisy Dove on August 27 via UNICEF, the organisation for which the both serve as Goodwill Ambassadors, to help support pregnant women and newborns at risk of dying from preventable causes.
“We are floating with love and wonder from the safe and healthy arrival of our daughter,” the couple announced in a statement.
“But we know we’re the lucky ones and not everyone can have a birthing experience as peaceful as ours was. Communities around the world are still experiencing a shortage of healthcare workers and every eleven seconds a pregnant woman or newborn dies, mostly from preventable causes.”
As part of their announcement, Perry and Bloom established a UNICEF donation page on their new daughter’s behalf, in “celebration of the heart we know our daughter already has.”