Throughout her journey to motherhood, Jodie Turner-Smith has done things on her own terms. While pregnant, the British actor pushed maternity style into new territory, notoriously celebrating her growing belly in a silky crop top and slip skirt on The Graham Norton Show. “#HereIsThatBumpYou’veBeenAskingFor,” she hashtagged alongside a snap of the look on Instagram. She also opened up about the struggles she faced navigating pregnancy and bracing to welcome her first child with husband Joshua Jackson—during a pandemic no less. “Every stage of my pregnancy brought its own challenges and lessons,” she wrote in an essay for British Vogue’s September 2020 issue, recounting her nearly four-day labor. “Nobody really teaches you about what your body goes through to bring a child into the world until you’re actually doing it.” In chronicling the ups and downs, Turner-Smith has been leading a new era of women celebrating the beauty of their pregnant bodies. The physical manifestation of this spirit? The sculptural belly cast that Turner-Smith had made while she was just over eight months pregnant.
You’d be forgiven if you weren’t already familiar with the term. Designed to immortalize the life-changing physical and emotional transformation of pregnancy, belly casts are 3D plaster molds of a mother-to-be’s growing bump or full torso, usually done a couple of weeks to a month before giving birth. The idea to do one was first floated to Turner-Smith by her friend Zeyna Sy, a creative and content producer that has worked with Marley Natural and Outdoor Voices, who was inspired as she witnessed Turner-Smith’s transition into motherhood. “As Jodie’s baby grew, I knew it must have been a very foreign feeling to have someone else govern her physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual evolution and expansion,” explains Sy. “Experiences during pregnancy vary, but one thing I heard a lot of women mention is how much they missed ‘the belly’ once they gave birth. I love the proportions of Jodie’s body and wanted to literally cast this trippy, transformative moment ‘in stone’—to pause it! I asked Jodie if she would be open to me testing the process and casting her belly and she said, ‘Yes, babe.’”
Once Sy got the green light, she asked friend, production designer, and visual artist Briana Gonzales to help guide her through the body-casting process. “I wanted the piece we created to look like a fragmented classical sculpture,” explains Sy of her vision, “delicate, but sturdy. Ultimately, I wanted Jodie to marvel at herself in this particular form. I knew it would be a cool, physical memory to have once she gave birth. It was my gift to Jodie, her husband, and her daughter in years to come.”
Belly-casting offerings are becoming more widely available by way of artists; specialized small businesses, such as British belly-casting studio Rock the Bump; and people giving birth support services, such as New York holistic birth doula Joyce Havinga-Droop of Birth Ambassador. A mother of three, Havinga-Droop first became acquainted with belly casting when her stepdaughter, who is an artist, proposed helping her make one while she was pregnant 12 years ago. “I loved the idea of eternalizing the magic of the moment,” explains Havinga-Droop. “Plus, it’s a beautiful, intimate ritual that you can do with other loved ones from your inner circle.” At Birth Ambassador, Havinga-Droop offers support for mothers, couples, or bigger groups in creating a belly cast together. The mold can be left in its natural, raw state or sanded down, painted, and embellished. “During the third trimester of pregnancy, it’s important to slow down and get more into a nesting mode,” she says. “Decorating and going all out on the belly is definitely one way of doing that.”
An evocative keepsake of pregnancy, belly casts quite literally cement and commemorate a woman’s growing bump as an objet d’art. “A mother will have a memory of the moment that her belly was big and full of life,” says Havinga-Droop. “It slows her down [and allows her] to take a moment and be present for the miracle that’s growing.” Moreover, the act of bringing a belly cast to life is a sacred tribute to motherhood and the power of female community, one that feels especially poignant for all parties after the challenges of the past year and the current emphasis on starting anew.
