They’re everywhere. You can’t avoid seeing them or hearing about them. Nearly every week there’s a new tabloid headline speculating on the existence or trumpeting the first photographs of a “baby bump” on another actress, singer or whatever it is Kim Kardashian is. The “news” that Kate Middleton, AKA the Duchess of Cambridge, bought a $55 blouse at a London maternity shop got more coverage this weekend on some media outlets than the battle between President Obama and the Republicans over sequestration.
I love babies and I appreciate that women give birth to babies, and some of those women are celebrities, but, so help me, if I have to listen to another TV commentator gush on about yet another “baby bump” I may just soil my diaper and cry.
Bonnie Fuller, the Canadian tabloid editor whose pursuit of photographs of pregnant celebrities is legendary, is generally credited with coining the term “baby bump” while at the helm of US Weekly in 2002. Some claim the term is older and originates in the U.K. But it was Fuller who made “baby bump” a pop-culture idiom and a cultural fetish. Thanks a lot, Bonnie.
Yes, I am aware that previous generations of expectant mothers had to hide their pregnancies for fear of losing work, among other things, and that was bad. I am also in full agreement with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 that forbids employers from firing employees for no other reason than the employee’s becoming pregnant. No one, myself least of all, is asking women to hide the outward appearance of their expanding uterus. Pregnancy, the condition, is a beautiful thing; pregnancy, the giddy, glorified celebrity status, not so much. Must we hear about every “baby bump” that strolls along Hollywood Boulevard or gets exposed on some beach in the Maldives? I’ve never even heard of some of these “celebrities”, which is why I suspect in my most cynical moments that getting pregnant may rapidly be becoming a career move for attention-starved actresses. Exclusive baby photos, anyone?
Duchess Kate, Kim, Fergie, Jessica Simpson, Kristen Bell, Busy Philipps, Malin Akerman (who?) and all the other “baby bump”-ers: best wishes and good luck; I hope you all have healthy, happy babies. But forgive me if I’m not interested in hearing about them or their effect on your choice of beachwear.