Hollywood is obsessed with pregnant women, and thesurveillanceof them. If any woman puts on weight in the limelight, the world assumes they must be pregnant. And the way fans have sleuthed around Kylie Jenner’s potential pregnancies show us how closely pregnant women are watched - even when the conception isn’t confirmed. A hand on the belly (Katy Perry at her O2 gig) or a little bloating (Lindsay Lohan) or just getting married and gaining a little weight (Sarah Snook) will prompt a barrage of speculation that someone must be expecting.
Part of the same problem, women who are carrying is so reduced to their status as pregnant people that they lose the rest of their identities. This is common outside of Hollywood - people often (directly or unintentionally) view their pregnant partners as carriers of their children specifically rather than a partner and many men have discomforts with pregnant bodies. But in the limelight, pregnant celebrities end up populating the headlines and gossip columns for simply just being.
We watched as Beyonce was constantly lauded over for so much as showing her face at events, thanked for sharing a snippet of her pregnancy with us. She was quickly stripped of her status as a singer, as a sex icon, and left with the title of ‘mother’ and little else. Her daughter Blue Ivy was born in 2012 and to this day, Beyonce is still scrutinised over everything from the height of her heels being ‘too much for a mum’, her Instagram photos being ‘too sexy for a mother’ and whatever else people can make about a pregnancy she’s no longer having. Any time Beyonce appeared at an event, even when she was accepting awards for her music, the headlines only documented her pregnancy.
This happens to pregnant celebrities all the time, and it was true of Jennifer Lawrence last night, who confirmed her pregnancy with her and husband Cooke Maroney’s child back in September. Despite being incredibly famous as a talented actress, the highest-paid actress in 2015 and 2016, her films grossing over $6 billion and making Time 100’s most influential people list, most news about J-Law has been reduced to her pregnancy since she announced it.
Last night, she attended the red carpet for Netflix’s upcoming movie Don't Look Up. Directed by Adam McKay, Don't Look Up follows astronomer Kate Dibiask. and her professor Dr Randall Mindy after they discover a comet is on a collision course with Earth. Lawrence will be playing the part of Kate Dibiask, after a career break which she took after believing that ‘everybody had gotten sick’ of her.
Turning up in a beautiful slim-line golden dress, her baby bump was of course on show. But unfortunately, that’s all anyone could focus on. Headlines like ‘Jennifer Lawrence debuts baby bump’ and ‘Jennifer Lawrence shows off pregnancy glow’ dominated the news, skipping over her return after a prolonged career break.
Celebrity or not, women are often (weirdly) considered to be ‘debuting their baby bump’ the first time they’re in public and ‘showing’ their pregnancy. But most of the time, these women are literally just going outside, while also happening to be pregnant. This is the case with Jennifer too.
Lawrence is doing… is her job. It’s that simple. She put on a dress and attended a film premiere event celebrating the upcoming film that she’s literally starring in.
The fixation on Jennifer’s bump speaks to a wider, stranger fascination with celebrity pregnancies. Whenever a celebrity is pregnant, whether we’re fans or not, it seems like we’re awaiting the arrival like it’s the second coming. From Beyonce’s first pregnancy to Kylie Jenner’s secret pregnancy later announced in a YouTube video after her daughter was already born, we’ve witnessed the frenzies fans go into over celebrity babies first-hand.
It’s hard to believe this is still a thing in 2021, that we reduce pregnant women to baby carriers and obsess over their every move, making every event attendance some sort of pregnancy milestone we imagine we’re involved in. It’s obsessive, sexist, and reeks of the 1800s. It wasn’t cool then, and it’s certainly not now.
Sure, when women (famous or not) are pregnant, they deserve a ‘congratulations!’ and some positive vibes - maybe even a few questions. But let’s not jeer over their pregnancies every single time they so much as step outside. It creates a lot of pressure and leaves the rest of the expectant mother’s identity to get left behind.
READ MORE: Love Island's Camilla Thurlow And Jamie Jewitt Are Expecting Their Second Child
READ MORE:****Have Yourself A Very Messy Christmas