What’s really driving our interest in celebrity pregnancies?

Kate Middleton is pregnant

I all but ignored the recent confirmation and (social)media frenzy over Kate Middleton’s pregnancy. For one, I’ve never really been into princesses; and for two, she is only one of 208 million women that will become pregnant this year alone. She’s not exactly trendsetting.

But I thought about it a little more when I came across this witty article in HuffPo, detailing the 9 most scrutinized uteri in recent history. They do a great job of highlighting the fat shaming and gender policing that the public inflicts on celebrities surrounding their fertility. We have historically used motherhood as a way to measure and define the worth of women. And only in pregnancy do we allow women to slightly deviate from body standards (emphasis on slightly). But as someone who literally screamed for joy when she found out Beyonce was pregnant, I had to ask myself: what is our real investment in celebrity fertility?

I think that perhaps it is the normalcy of pregnancy that makes it such an interesting condition when taken up by famous/powerful women. Nevertheless, this interest is married to our ideas about them as women. Sure, I was happy that Beyonce and hubby were going to experience the joys of parenthood. But I was more eager to see how Beyonce was going to make pregnancy, like everything else she touches, fabulous. Part of me wanted to believe that King B was going to swoop down in her stilettos and change the motherhood game for good. I wasn’t sure how, but I wanted to believe she could. These ideas about her super mother powers were birthed from my assumptions about her gender performance. She looks great; she sings great; she’s a great businesswoman; her performances are great; she is a great woman. She has to be a great mom, even if she spends most of her days away from home, has an alter ego, and wears leotards in front of millions of people. 

Our rhetoric about motherhood is scripted. We are constantly contextualizing and evaluating the circumstances under which women are conceiving and choosing to have children, whether it relates to their appearance, their relationships, their health, their personalities, etc. This is intensified when we are talking about women whose lives we somehow feel entitled to via public viewing. But at its heart, these ideas are no different than the stares we give to poor mothers, the finger wagging we do to young mothers, and the shame we shoot at single mothers. Focusing on celebrity fertility is more than just another way in which we keep tabs on the popular people we love (and hate). It also allows us to weigh in on the very real reproductive decisions of women without being accountable for how our ideas might be infringing on their own identities and lives.

I’m not saying that we are bad people for wanting to see our favorite celebrities transform while they go through the trimesters of pregnancy or how cute they dress their babies. I entered “beyonce baby bump in my Google search bar several times a month until baby Blue Ivy was born. But it is important that we remain honest and reflective of the narratives we come up with as we engage.

Feministing's resident "sexpert", Sesali is a published writer and professional shit talker. She is a queer Black girl, fat girl, and trainer. She was the former Training Director at the United States Student Association and later a member of the Youth Organizing team at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She received her bachelors in Women's and Gender Studies from Depaul University in 2012 and is currently pursuing a master's in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality studies at Georgia State University in Atlanta. A self identified "trap" feminist, and trained with a reproductive justice background, her interests include the intersections of feminism and: pop culture, youth culture, social media, hip hop, girlhood, sexuality, race, gender, and Beyonce. Sesali joined the team in 2010 as one of the winners of our So You Think You Can Blog contest.

is Feministing's resident sexpert and cynic.

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