Can We Talk About Beyonce’s Snap Back?

Beyonce had twins a month ago, and she fiiiiiiinally revealed their picture today. The boy is Sir Carter, and the girl is Rumi Carter. Now, I would have asked Beyonce to teach me what moves she and Jay Z used to conceive their twins, so I can go replicate it with Igwe for our own future twins, but I want confusingly identical twin boys – not a boy and a girl. With that being said, let’s talk about Beyonce’s snap back.

That said, I’m a fan of Beyonce. Not necessarily for her music, but for her business and her brand. She’s arguably the world’s most popular pop star, but we barely know anything about her, unless she wants us to know it. That elevator incident was a slip up. Or was it? If she and Jay Z hadn’t sung about his infidelity, the world would have never known. And even at that sef, I’m not totally convinced that he cheated. For all I know, this was a business decision on their part to make us listen and pay to listen some more. I might be wrong. Either way, I couldn’t care less what’s going on in their marriage. No one’s marriage is perfect, so I don’t know why you expect perfection in hers.

Anyway, today, she released a picture on her gram – where she has 104 million followers and is still following no one. NO ONE – and people are wondering if the snap back is real or paid for. Is it really possible for her tummy to be this flat one month after having twins, my fellow humans are asking. And the fact that we can see her belly button looking ever-so-perfect. How did she do it?

Well, firstly, I didn’t even notice the belly button, and this is reason number 49302618 why I would fail woefully as a gossip blogger. I just really don’t care. That said, I did not think anything of her snap back until I started seeing it being questioned on social media.  People are wondering if her snap back is a result of surgery or if it’s because she was fit before she got pregnant anyway or if it’s about the angle the picture was taken or if it’s photoshop or if it’s because she has a nutritionist and trainer on standby.

My question: does it really matter? Does the reason for Beyonce’s snap back really matter?

Unfortunately, these days, we have become obsessed with the #TeamSnapBack trend. There is absolutely nothing wrong with snapping back after twenty-four hours or twenty-four months. Everyone is different. We have forgotten the miracle in giving life. You know, not everyone who wants to carry a child gets to actually carry one. And unfortunately, not every woman who goes in to have a baby comes out alive and/or with a baby. While you’re arguing about Beyonce’s snap back, there are women weeping because they just want to experience a plus sign on their pee stick. Remember this.

No matter what the outside of your body looks like, and whether you have six packs or sixteen packs, and whether you even snap back before you birth the baby, no woman’s body remains the same. In my case for example, since having Ada Verastic, I now experience night sweats. It does not happen every night, but there are nights that I wake up drenched in sweat. And there are times that I tinkle when I laugh a little too hard. There’s also the c-section scar on my bikini line, and believe me when I say that I have never, ever loved a scar as much as I love this one. I love touching it, and I love looking at it.

I gained twenty-four pounds throughout my pregnancy, and about two weeks later, I had lost all the twenty-four pounds. But my tummy is a little rounder than it was before I had the baby, and I am okay with this too. 

I cannot honestly tell you that if I was wealthy, I wouldn’t go under the knife after having all my babies. It’s easy to say that I would never do it because right now, I don’t have the money to do it anyway, but what I know for sure is that of all the things I have done in my life, nothing comes close to having a baby. NOTHING.

Realistically, you should not be looking at women like Beyonce and comparing them to you because, well, you are not her. You don’t have her money or her fame or her influence, and you also don’t have her scrutiny. The whole world isn’t watching you and judging you. The irony, sadly, also is that the people who are criticizing her for possibly doing surgery to perfect her snap back are the same people who would criticize her for not snapping back quickly enough. She can’t win.

I would say that it’s common sense to not compare yourself to celebrities, but sense isn’t common. What you see on the gram and in magazines isn’t real life. It’s just a moment in real life that was orchestrated to be that exact moment. And we need to be okay with that – without being hard on ourselves for not being able to achieve the same thing.

Let’s leave Beyonce and her snap back alone. She’s beautiful. The babies are beautiful. It’s all good!

To your self-love,

King Vera Ezimora