On her Instagram story Friday, Blake Lively posted some throwbacks from a year ago, just after she'd given birth to her third daughter, Betty.
On one of her posts, she
spoke out about her frustration that designers don't make clothes for all bodies, especially for bodies that have just given birth. Alongside an image of herself from The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, alongside which she wrote, "I put together a @lanvinofficial shirt and dress from @netaporter to make this pretty outfit. Because no one had samples that fit me after giving birth. And so many clothes from stores didn't fit either. So. Many.
It doesn't send a great message to women when their bodies don't fit into what brands have to offer. It's alienating and confusing. And I wish I felt as confident then as I do now, a year later looking back. That body gave me a baby. And was producing that baby's entire food supply. What a beautiful miracle. But instead of feeling proud, I felt insecure. Simply because I didn't fit into clothes. How silly that is in retrospect."
She added a shout-out to Megababe founder and body-positive writer Katie Sturino: "@katiesturino and others are out there challenging brands to do better, helping women to not feel alone. And she's making meaningful progress. She reminds me, we can all ask better from the brands we love."
During that interview with Fallon last January (pre-COVID), Lively spoke about her third child, whose birth she and husband Ryan Reynolds had kept mostly private.
"I sure did [have another baby]," she told Fallon. "I have so many children! Yeah, it's a bit of a tough adjustment in our house, but it's good. I have two other daughters so my oldest is very into the baby, but my middle child not so much, but we're thinking of keeping her." Her "middle child," Inez, did come around to Betty, though:
"And then I said to her, I said, 'you know, you're going to teach her everything she knows. You get to teach her about cities and the sky and flowers and Santa Claus and Mickey Mouse, anything you want.' And she goes, 'oh, I didn’t love you, but now I do.'