MSN hits all the targets of bad taste when it asks the question, “How on Earth did it get so cool to be pregnant?” and then titled their answer “Hip to be Round” complete with a 15-year retrospective of pregnant celebrities.
Speaking of pregnant celebrities…satire, meet reality. You two have more in common than you think.
Anyway, enough scariness, back to the article-mocking.
Maybe there’s something in the water. Even the most casual pop-culture consumer has probably noticed that the latest must-have celebrity accessory is, apparently, a belly. Check out the July 10 issue of Star magazine. It features the “Hollywood Bump Brigade” with pictures of preggo Jennie Garth, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Sofia Coppola. Britney Spears channeled her inner-Demi Moore by posing naked with her bump on the cover of this month’s Harper’s Bazaar. Angelina Jolie took it all to a whole new level by commandeering a coastal African country for her delivery.
Unless the water of New York and California is filled with radioactive super sperm , I highly doubt the water is what is causing this red-hot trend. But I’m not a doctor, I’m just someone who gets annoyed when people who are paid to write start off with a lazy inappropriate cliche.
Ok, for starters, Britney Spears has no inner Demi Moore. Britney Spears has a worthless husband, suprise second pregnancy, poor parenting skills and a need to stay in the spotlight so her career doesn’t fade any more rapidly than it was before she starting churning out K-Fed spawn. She needs a divorce lawyer and some decent advice on everything from hair dye to childcare. Bazaar making her look all cute and toned and airbrushed on the cover of a magazine like everything in her life is OK, enviable, even, is not helping. Bazaar, stop enabling Britney Spears!
Secondly, Jolie’s sealing up an entire nation so she can have a baby was one of the greatest abuses of power ever in history orchestrated by a someone who was not royalty. That’s not a “whole new level” that is a “shameful act for which she should be smacked about the face and head by the very human-rights organizations that she has helped in the past.” She’d thank them later. Also, please note that that baby was all of 7 days old before the grocery store headlines went from “Oh gurgle gurgle look at the sexy awesome family” to “Baby ruining relationship, oh my God! It’s all over!” so maybe you don’t want to draw any more attention to them in this article seeing as…
You’re point seems to be that a properly cared for an Pilates-ed up “bump” is an accessory, when in fact it is a fetus, which turns into a baby, which is a whole nother thing entirely and which should not be taken lightly as it is a life changing event that can not be sent to the thrift store once it is no longer fashionable.
Julia Beck, founder of Forty Weeks, a marketing company that studies expectant and new parents, says there has indeed been a bump in the number of visible bumps. The culture of pregnancy, she says, is undergoing something of a rebirth. What was once something to be endured—a practically taboo means to an end—has become the end in itself. It’s hip to be round.
Let’s try that again, with honesty this time:
Julia Beck, founder of Forty Weeks, a marketing compnay that studies expectant and new parents, says that there has indeed been a bump in the number of visible bumps. As it turns out, she says, pregnant woman are a rich, wonderful, almost mouth-watering market who until recently were swaddled in tents of such embarassing colors and patterns that they could hardly be seen outdoors. If we can show them sexy pregnant celebrities wearing sexy expensive maternity clothes, then we can tap into their deepest insecurities at a time when their hormones are doing most of the work for us and get them to spend sooo much money, oh, god, it makes me want to orgasm just thinking about it….what? Oh, yeah, printable quote…uhhh, culture of pregancy, hip to be round, something like that ok?
That seems a bit more like it.
So Julia’s totally plugging the baby-industrial complex here. She’s not even trying to hide it. There are a bunch of wonderful ways to snark this article, but I think it’s best to watch Julia machete her way through this infomercial with all the grace of those Disney Ballerina-Ostriches.
NEWSWEEK: It seems like pregnancy is almost hip right now.
Julia Beck: It is definitely hip to be pregnant right now.
Why is that?
I think what we’re looking at is a shift from pregnancy simply being a means to an end—in other words, it was a 40-week obligation, there was a gestational period going at the end of which that’s when the fun began. The exit strategy was literally a baby’s entry into the world. So we shifted.
When did that start?
The major shift was about five years ago. It became much more experiential. People began to see pregnancy as a major accomplishment and they really began to think about it as the moment itself. So you then began to see products that are answering that call.
That’s right, pregnancy is cool now because we got all introspective – and everyone knows you can’t spell “introspection” without “complete range of new products and services – ask me for details!” Well, you can’t in American English, anyway.
What kinds of new products and services, you ask? Well…
First of all this whole notion of being very pleased with your pregnant self, this notion of finding ways to celebrate pregnancy by having very interestingly themed baby showers or very well-thought out nurseries or a higher standard of baby carriage.
Finding ways to celebrate services! And products of a higher standard! What is a pregancy without an interestingly themed baby shower or a monster freaking expensive baby carriage?
No, really.
Yeah, higher standard of baby carriage, but some of them go for $800 or more. It also gets to the edge of ridiculous.
It does get to the ridiculous. But at the same time it’s all about range of option and the one thing you can’t argue with is more options. More women are able to really find what they want and parents are able to find the right parenting tools for themselves. Before we had a really, really narrow field. I have an 8-year-old and I couldn’t decorate that nursery in anything that wasn’t really typical duck and bunny look. But then people came out like Amy Coe and she started to infuse vintage-inspired fabrics into a nursery. More sophisticated, more elegant
Julia’s loathe to agree that an $800 baby stroller is silly, because she is focused like a laser on her message (Message: Any money spent on goods or services to make your pregancy perfect is money well spent. Ask me how!). What it’s about is options! Wealthy self absorbed pregnant women can’t have too many options, you know. The non-wealthy ones, eh, fuck ‘em, they hardly pay for goods or services at all. As a marketing executive, Julia can’t even see them. Sometimes she actually sits on them on the subway because she honestly thought the seat was empty.
I’m not a parent and hardly a pregnancy expert, but I have to call bullshit on the idea that decorating for a child in a way that won’t drive you insane requires the help of Amy Coe. My mom did it on her own. The walls were yellow. The furniture was wood. And the decorations were toys. Done and done.
Are you a new mom? You need Julia. Are you the type of woman who generally feels like she’s in charge of any situation? Then you just need to hand Julia a blank, signed check right now.
Women are waiting more often now than they used to. Why are they waiting and how does it affect their lifestyle to suddenly become pregnant?
You take a woman who has accomplished great things in the career place. She’s used to having support personnel under her; she knows how to solve problems. You’re literally throwing her down on her back at the bottom of the learning curve. What that does is open a whole new industry which is the expert baby advice, because they are less likely to go with their intuition. That is one of the elements that is the most troublesome to me.
Are you past child-bearing age, not actually a woman, or not even necessarily human, but you know someone who is or might one day be pregnant? Then you need Julia, too.
Any sense of what the next big thing is going to be?
I’m fixated on everyone else trying to pretend they’re pregnant—I call it pregnancy by association. Expectant fathers, expectant grandparents, expectant siblings and expectant pets. There’s products for everybody right now. There are diaper bags just for dad. There are “I’m a Big Sister” T-shirts. The other trend that is here but growing by leaps and bounds is the green baby. Certainly celebrities are embracing that trend, and, as always, they’re the first. They’ve been doing organic baby food on the West Coast for a while.
Julia, she’s available. Julia. With so much at stake, can you afford to not give Julia money? Call Julia now. Operators are standing by.
BONUS! Entry-level patriarchy blaming! Practice here if Twisty won’t let you comment yet!
Amanda has discussed the fixation on pregnant celebrities before, although I can only find one example of it I know she’s attacked it a couple of times.
Analyze Julia’s statements, and tell us what part of the patriarchy/conspicuous consumer culture she’s pimping for most offensively, and why. For those of you who don’t meet Twisty’s standards, this is an excellent opportunity to hone your patriarchy-blaming skills. Don’t be shy, now. There’s plenty here to work with.
UPDATED: I googled Amy Coe, and oh my jesus freaking criminey, I didn’t realize it was that bad. I must have been thinking of someone completely different – I swear to god the baby-room designer I read about in People or wherever at the laundromat wasn’t that bad. It didn’t occur to me that there could be more than one baby-room designer. I am shamefully naive. And wickedly tempted to send the link to my pregnant pending-sister-in-law.
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