As Anne Hathaway, 43, who is expecting her third child with her husband, Adam Shulman, stood on the red carpet for her new film The End of Oak Street in LA, only one thing was on everybody’s minds: her baby bump outfit.

The Odyssey and Devil Wears Prada 2 star is clearly having a ball dressing up during her pregnancy. But her latest red carpet look has been ridiculed, with people on social media up in arms that she looks “ridiculous”, “tacky” and “bizarre”.

Beaming as she posed for the cameras, Hathaway wore a sleeveless baby blue crop top. From the back, it morphs into a long flowing cape-like garment with red lining, falling behind her onto the floor, and from the front, it reveals her bump. She paired it with low-slung wide-legged jeans and red pointed ballet pumps.

It’s been written off as a wardrobe malfunction, with people taking to social media to voice their negative opinions: “I love her. I do not understand why her stylist did this to her,” said one user. While another said: “They could style her bump in so many cute ways. Why this” [sic].

“Unflattering styling for a beautiful pregnant woman,” commented somebody else on Instagram, and another said, “love her – outfit just No.” [sic]

I see their point. Hathaway’s outfit is definitely unusual – it’s a play on a nice top and jeans, but the pregnant version. And yet, I don’t think her baby bump style is ridiculous – it’s a playful celebration of life and the mixed-up feeling that’s so common when you are about to have a baby.

What I love about Hathaway’s outfit is that it’s so playful. It gives off raiding your children’s dressing up box vibes, whilst embracing the joyous feeling of having another baby without caring what anybody else thinks – and losing negative self-chatter about how you look.

It’s also more than most women manage to pull off – me for starters. When I was pregnant, I just wore maternity jeans with a huge elastic band that my bump could grow into, and then forgot to take them off for about a year after I’d had both my babies in 2016 and 2018.

That’s why we shouldn’t criticise her style and should focus on the bigger picture. It might be an outfit that her social media critics wouldn’t be seen dead in, but it’s a clear message of body positivity, strength, and gender equality – and it’s her unique expression of the next chapter of her life.

Motherhood is messy and creative – and so is her outfit. Why should she have to conform to boring maternity trends when she can invent her own?

From the start, she made her pregnancy announcement in June by sharing a video to Instagram cradling her baby bump with the caption: “Baby, I’m yours x.” Wearing a white linen dress that initially looks like draped curtains, the actor drops her arms to unveil her bare baby bump above the elasticated waist of her maxi skirt.

Since then, she’s fully embraced her maternity style. While out and about in New York City later that month, Hathaway wore a red jumpsuit with a ruffled, peplum waist from the Ashlyn Spring 2026 runway, with the jersey top accidentally worn backwards.

It was reminiscent of maternity trailblazer Rihanna's unbuttoned red Loewe jumpsuit during her 2023 Super Bowl LVII halftime show, which famously revealed her pregnancy.

In July, Hathaway donned a white Stella McCartney top with the mesh bottom half putting her baby bump on full display, along with an asymmetrical blue-and-white striped maxi skirt (which also had mesh panels for breathabilty) and pink Aquazzura pink sandal heels, adorned with multicoloured botanicals.

It has taken baby bump fashion to a new level because it’s unshouty in a simple and understated way – but still huge fun.

Hathaway spoke about her “buzzer beater” pregnancy on Late Night with Seth Meyers in July, explaining how shocked she was to have got pregnant so easily given her age after years of well-documented fertility challenges. She already has sons, Jonathan Rosebanks Shulman,10, and Jack Shulman, six.

In 2015, she suffered a miscarriage while starring in the off-Broadway one-woman play Grounded, in a performance that required her to act out going through childbirth every night – and it made processing her own loss more complicated.

In 2019, when she announced her second pregnancy on Instagram, she made a point of explaining that her journey of expanding her family hadn’t been without its challenges, so as not to isolate other women struggling with fertility issues.

“For everyone going through infertility and conception hell, please know it was not a straight line to either of my pregnancies,” she wrote in the caption. “Sending you extra love.”

Today, the shift toward body positivity has turned the baby bump into a symbol of strength and beauty rather than something to hide

So it’s no wonder that she is celebrating her pregnancies in such a joyful way. And she’s not alone. Celebrities have long channelled their personal style through maternity outfits to show off growing baby bumps.

Rihanna completely threw out the rule book and changed pregnancy fashion by exposing her bump in sheer lace and crop tops. The sheer lingerie dress, matching bra and tiny thong she wore to the Dior show in Paris in 2022, as she proudly put her pregnancy bump on display, broke the internet.

Who can forget Sienna Miller at Vogue World London in 2023 showing off her baby bump in a white Schiaparelli Haute Couture two-piece set with a dramatic taffeta skirt and her massive baby bump on show?

The catalyst was Demi Moore’s naked 1991 Vanity Fair cover shoot when she was seven months pregnant, which shifted the cultural landscape and put an end to taboos around not hiding pregnancy.

Women began to celebrate the physical transformation of a growing bump instead of hiding it – and overturned the tradition that treated pregnancy as unglamorous into pregnancy as a visible, exhilarating life achievement. Historically, it’s believed that patriarchy influenced maternity fashion by enforcing purity, domesticity and concealing pregnancies from the public realm with shapeless dresses that looked like sacks.

Today, the shift toward body positivity has turned the baby bump into a symbol of strength and beauty rather than something to hide – and that is why we should celebrate Hathaway’s choice of outfit on the red carpet, not laugh at it.

It’s not just about empowerment and body autonomy – it’s about standing up loud and proud in a society where pregnancy deeply impacts gender gaps, driving economic inequality through the “motherhood penalty”.

In a world where earnings drop sharply after childbirth, as women transition to lower-paying jobs and flexible working – or face pregnancy discrimination, celebrating women matters.

Hathaway’s outfit might not be to everyone’s taste, but who cares? Because it’s a clear message of female independence and solidarity. While it’s easy to get hung up on personal fashion tastes, that message matters. Her celebration of pregnancy is a powerful symbol in the face of inequality.

I just hope we see some more epic outfits in what is likely to be Hathaway’s most creative era – having a baby. It’s the best time to let your inner child out and prepare for parenthood – and if that means experimenting with clothing, then it must be done without fear of judgement.