Get out of Jessica Simpson’s womb!
Is she or isn't she! Who cares? The tabloid obsession with celebrity baby-bumps reduces women to their uterus
Topics: Motherhood, Celebrity, Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Simpson, Entertainment News
So far this week, a very not-pregnant Jennifer Aniston has had to explain that she’s merely “gained a couple of pounds” since quitting smoking, while an increasingly big-bellied Jessica Simpson remains conspicuously silent about her obvious midsection girth. We are living in strange times indeed, celebrity womb-wise.
We’ve come a long way from the days when Lucille Ball’s pregnancy was so discreetly managed, that she couldn’t even use the word “pregnant” on her own television show, and since Shirley Jones quietly plowed through her work in “The Music Man” while costume designers diligently let out her dresses. Then in August 1991, celebrity fecundity jumped the shark when Demi Moore appeared nude and ready to drop on the cover of Vanity Fair. In the 20 years since then, tabloid culture has eagerly made a mountain out of every muffin top, turning every C-lister’s bout of bloat into a possible baby bump. And when a woman does go public with her status, she’s still subject to intense — nay, crackpot — scrutiny. Witness the obsessive attention Beyonce’s abdomen area has been getting of late, and rumors that she’s faking the whole thing. Note to everybody: Real life rarely resembles a plot point on “Glee.”
Meanwhile, Simpson seems to be swelling up like a tick these days, but is keeping her lips firmly zipped. The New York Post speculated that Simpson — who has made a career of belching and flatulence on her reality show, and who on Tuesday tweeted a photo of herself on a toilet — might have discovered discretion in the hope of a six-figure payoff. Simpson, who’s engaged to former San Francisco 49er Eric Johnson, is allegedly shopping around her exclusive story – and access to the obligatory post-baby photo spread — to the cool tune of $500,000. Because why get knocked up if you can’t leverage the crap out of it? But regardless of her motives, Simpson appears to have committed the cardinal sin of waiting too long to make hay of her blessed event. When and if she finally grants that big tell-all, it’ll likely be the biggest “No duh” since Ricky Martin came out. “Is she or isn’t she?” sells magazines. But “Guess why I can’t see my feet, y’all?” is, with every passing day, considerably less of a tabloid bombshell.
Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.




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