Queen Bey in her own words!
Beyonce in her own words!
The 36-year-old singer lands the coveted cover of Vogue magazine's September issue, and looks stunning in a huge floral head piece and a white ruffled dress in one of the photos. The images were taken by photographer Tyler Mitchell.
In addition to starring on the cover, Beyonce also offers a very candid look at her personal life in an article she wrote titled: Beyoncé in Her Own Words: Her Life, Her Body, Her Heritage.
In this piece, she talks about her body image issues after weighing 218 pounds while pregnant with twins, Sir and Rumi, as well as having an emergency C-section.
The mother of three says she now regrets the pressure she put on herself to lose the baby weight after the birth of her oldest daughter, Blue Ivy, in January 2012. "After the birth of my first child, I believed in the things society said about how my body should look," she confides. "I put pressure on myself to lose all the baby weight in three months, and scheduled a small tour to assure I would do it. Looking back, that was crazy."
Beyonce goes on to recall the complications she had with the birth of her and JAY-Z's twins in June 2017. "I was 218 pounds the day I gave birth to Rumi and Sir. I was swollen from toxemia and had been on bed rest for over a month," she writes. "My health and my babies’ health were in danger, so I had an emergency C-section. We spent many weeks in the NICU."
Referring to JAY-Z as a "soldier" during this time, Beyonce encourages new moms and women and men everywhere to "appreciate the beauty in their natural bodies."
"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," she continues. "Whenever I’m ready to get a six-pack, I will go into beast zone and work my a** off until I have it. But right now, my little FUPA and I feel like we are meant to be."
Beyonce also opens up about the legacy she wants to leave behind, her ancestry and her journey to feeling "so much more beautiful, so much sexier, so much more interesting," and "so much more powerful" than she ever has before.
"I have experienced betrayals and heartbreaks in many forms. I have had disappointments in business partnerships as well as personal ones, and they all left me feeling neglected, lost, and vulnerable," she says. "Through it all I have learned to laugh and cry and grow. I look at the woman I was in my 20s and I see a young lady growing into confidence but intent on pleasing everyone around her."
As for her legacy, she is now thinking about the world she wants to leave behind for her children. "As the mother of two girls, it’s important to me that they see themselves too—in books, films, and on runways," she writes in part. "I hope to teach my son not to fall victim to what the internet says he should be or how he should love. I want to create better representations for him so he is allowed to reach his full potential as a man."
Beyonce concludes, "I’m in a place of gratitude right now. I am accepting of who I am. I will continue to explore every inch of my soul and every part of my artistry."
This marks Beyonce's fourth time on the fashion magazine's cover as she was a Vogue cover star first in 2009, then 2013 and most recently in 2015 for its September issue.
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