Demi Moore Looks Back on Landmark Vanity Fair Cover

When Demi Moore’s eldest daughter, Rumer Willis, announced her impending parenthood with an Instagram post depicting her pregnant form, it didn’t feel that different than the slew of other baby bump-highlighting photos her peers have posted in recent years. But when Willis did it, she was arguably carrying on a family tradition that started in 1991 at Vanity Fair, when Moore posed for this magazine’s August cover while seven months pregnant with her second child, Scout Willis.

It’s an image familiar to many, an iconic shot by photographer Annie Leibovitz taken when the actor was 28 years old—and already a bankable star after her recent turn in the 1990 thriller Ghost. Then married to actor Bruce Willis, Moore posed for the cover unclothed, with her hand cradling her belly.

The image set off a firestorm among retailers, with grocery stores such as Safeway and Giant refusing to carry the magazine on their shelves. “We are a family-oriented business,” a spokesperson for Giant told the Washington Post at the time.. “Very young children go to the magazine section while waiting for their parents to finish shopping. We did what we thought was right.”

Thirty-three years later, Demi Moore is still bemused by the fuss. Speaking with the New York Times, the star of body horror film The Substance says she still doesn’t understand why her body inspired such retail horror. The actor brought the topic up when asked if she had compared herself to Willis during their marriage, especially when it came to his earning power. “It wasn’t about comparing myself to him,” she said in response. “Yes, I saw what he got paid. It was really more about: ‘Why shouldn’t I? If I’m doing the same amount of work, why shouldn’t I?’”

“And it’s no different than when I did the cover for Vanity Fair pregnant,” she continued. “I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal, why women when they were pregnant needed to be hidden?”

In Moore’s mind, the reaction to the photo came from a ridiculously puritanical place. “Why is it that we have to deny that we had sex?” the star of 1995’s The Scarlet Letter asked. “That’s the fear, right, that if you show your belly, that means, oh, my gosh, you’ve had sex.”

This isn’t the first time that cover has come up in recent days. Speaking with Interview earlier this week, Moore also addressed the now-legendary shot. “Obviously, we did some images clothed, but at the end of the shoot, we did other ones of me nude. I remember saying to Annie [Leibovitz], ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if they used this for the cover?’”

“Then two weeks later,” Moore continued, “Annie calls me to say, ‘Hey, I’m sending you the image. How would you feel about letting them use this for the cover? Or we could do the one of your hand covering your breast.’ It’s not that I was entirely naive, but I never imagined it would have the impact that it did, because I was just reflecting how I felt—that women had not had an opportunity to express themselves while pregnant.”

The photo unleashed a new era for celebrities who are expecting, former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown later said. “Stars who are pregnant since, all want to do that Demi Moore shot,” Brown told CNBC in a 2018 interview. These days, “pregnant stars want to say, [this is] my rite of passage,” Brown said. “I get to do my Demi Moore cover.”

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