"Hours after Princess Diana gave birth, she walked out onto the steps of the Lindo Wing, the private maternity ward of St. Mary's Hospital in London, where she was met with photographers from around the world. As she introduced Prince William, then a couple years later, Prince Harry, she looked radiant, with flawless makeup and flowing gowns. It was a portrait of maternal serenity."
"Hirschhorn's goal was to capture the complexity of women's experience after giving birth, complicating the sanitized image the world has come to expect in this setting. The seven-foot-tall monument, entitled "Mother Vérité" (French for "truth") is based on 3D scans of eight women from diverse backgrounds, and aims to realistically capture scars, swelling, and curves. The statue will travel around Europe and the United States over the next months, ending up at Art Basel, Miami in December."
"But it is far from the full picture for the roughly 140 million women who enter postpartum every year. It likely did not even capture what Diana herself was feeling on those steps. "There's a duality in those moments," says Chelsea Hirschhorn, founder and CEO of Frida, a company that makes products for postpartum mothers and newborns. "You're proud of what you've just accomplished and excited to enter this next chapter of life. But you're exhausted, broken, hurting, and in pain.""
Princess Diana's public postpartum image at the Lindo Wing presented maternal serenity that likely masked pain and exhaustion. Frida commissioned a seven‑foot monument, Mother Vérité, by Rayvenn Shaleigha D'Clark to portray postpartum women with realistic scars, swelling, and curves based on 3D scans of eight diverse women. The statue will tour Europe and the United States and conclude at Art Basel Miami in December. Frida shifted from newborn products to postpartum solutions and aims to complicate sanitized expectations by centering the duality of pride and physical hardship after birth.
Read at Fast Company
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