The fourth pregnancy of United States Second Lady Usha Vance has drawn considerable attention due to her husband JD Vance’s current term in office. The Vice President recently came to his wife’s defence after a New York Times article speculated on the political significance of her maternity wardrobe — a suggestion that Usha has since publicly rejected.
JD Vance responded to the piece with a joke about his wife’s ability to buy a $50 Old Navy coral maternity dress for just $8.75, stating that her budgeting skills qualified her to become the next director of the federal budget.
“She bought a $50 dress for $8.75. America: meet your next director of the federal budget!” Vance wrote in response to a post by the Second Lady on social media platform X.
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Storytime with the Second Lady
The controversy first gained traction following an episode of the Second Lady’s podcast, Storytime with the Second Lady, in which Usha is joined by special guests to read children’s stories in an accessible format and “inspire a lifelong love of reading”, according to the channel’s official bio.
Usha was seen wearing a bodycon Old Navy dress during a special Father’s Day episode featuring her husband. The outfit prompted New York Times fashion director Vanessa Friedman to argue that the choice was a deliberate political statement aimed at humanising the Vice President and advancing the MAGA movement’s approach to feminism and fertility.
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Usha responded to the article with humour. “Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what The New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks! In the meantime, enjoy my pregnancy fashion (or lack thereof) and a good story with your kids on Storytime with the Second Lady,” she wrote.
She later shared the receipt for the dress to further underline her point.
The New York Times piece titled “The Politics and Power of the Pregnancy Image” compared Usha’s maternity wardrobe with that of two other prominent White House figures, Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Katie Miller, wife of Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, both of whom happened to be pregnant at the same time as the Second Lady.
Friedman’s MAGA argument
Friedman opens her piece by highlighting the significance of Vance’s pregnancy, noting that it is the first public pregnancy in a vice-presidential family since Ellen Colfax, wife of Schuyler Colfax, in 1870.
“That three such prominent women in the MAGA movement were pregnant at pretty much the same time was, indubitably, a coincidence. But for an administration that has such an intuitive and strategic understanding of the power of aesthetics that an unspoken dress code in which men outfit themselves in the image of the president has developed, it has also become a telling one,” Friedman wrote.
She argued that the women’s maternity wardrobes had become a “picture of the White House’s family and fertility platform” and may “offer an image of idealised womanhood that gives literal shape to the pronatalist movement”.
Friedman then contrasted their approach with that of spouses of previous political leaders, including Cherie Blair, wife of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of former US President John F. Kennedy, both of whom opted for looser silhouettes during pregnancy. She described the current trend as “a departure from the tradwife aesthetic”.
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Leavitt recently returned from maternity leave after giving birth to her first child on May 1, while Miller welcomed the couple’s fourth child on June 3. Usha Vance is expected to give birth sometime in July.
