Cue the tie-waist skirt, the design that played a crucial role in normalizing public pregnancy. It was a midcentury maternity game changer. Hugely popular between 1939, just after it was patented, and 1958, the year that stretchy Lycra fabric was invented, the tie-waist skirt became a seminal garment for its ability to address the concerns of polite society, where maternity clothes were meant to function as—in the words of a 1928 Vogue editorial—“miracles of concealment.”
With a large U-shape cut out at its top where the skirt met the waistband, the design had a drawstring flexibly encircling the growing belly, while a vertical tab connecting the skirt to one of a series of snaps on the waistband. As pregnancy progressed, the vertical tab could be let out and fastened to the next snap in the series, adjusting for fit while maintaining an even hemline. The tie around the waist, meanwhile, could be let out as the hips and rib circumference expanded. Combined with childlike accessories such as bows, tented tops (which hung down to hide the cutout at the top of the skirt), and Peter Pan collars, it was just subtle enough—a perfect panacea for the unutterable.
And this was the way Ball dressed, even as the enceinte storyline blossomed along with her bump. TV audiences (the episode “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” was broadcast to an unprecedented audience of 44 million Americans) were mesmerized by the drama playing out on their screens. Lucy embodied the tension between her character, circumscribed by domesticity, and her real-life role as an expectant mother working (as an actress, no less) outside the home. While the stereotype of a mother-to-be’s home life was acted out, its public, popular aspect troubled traditional notions of propriety. After all, polite society still considered a burgeoning stomach a literal sign of sex, and an unflattering silhouette—something more safely kept behind closed doors.
The idea of having a pregnant actress portray a pregnant woman on television was considered so shocking that the show’s major sponsor, Philip Morris, at first suggested that Lucy hide her changing body behind tables and chairs. But Ball, Desi Arnaz (Lucy’s on-screen and off-screen husband), and the show’s producers rejected that idea, transforming what could have been the end of the series into a new arena for television audiences. Under the very same lens employed in other episodes—the day-to-day happenings of an all-American middle-class family—Lucy’s changing body, clothing, mood swings, cravings, and baby name choices made a formerly private experience a completely public one in front of an audience of millions, reflecting the particulars and changing power dynamics of family life amid the emerging baby boom.