Reproduction of the rich and famous

Forget golden statuettes. In the new, family-friendly Hollywood, the real status symbols are sonograms and diamond solitaires.

By Daniel Harris

Read more: Hollywood, Pregnancy, Celebrities, Life

Photos: AP/WideWorld

A photo montage of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise with their daughter, Suri (front), in Rome, on Nov. 16, 2006, and Angelina Jolie and her daughter Zahara in Mumbai, India, on Nov. 12, 2006

Nov. 20, 2006 | Had Angelina Jolie and Katie Holmes given birth out of wedlock even 50 years ago, they may very well have been pilloried, not only in gossip columns and Sunday sermons, but on the floor of the U.S. Senate. When, in 1949, Ingrid Bergman became pregnant during her notorious affair with the Italian director Roberto Rossellini, Edwin Johnson, a senator from Colorado, rallied to the defense of motherhood and denounced her as "a horrible example ... and a powerful influence of evil," "an apostle of degradation" "whose unconventional free-love conduct must be regarded ... as an assault upon the institution of marriage." He then led a successful vote declaring her persona non grata, thus preventing her from appearing in American films for the next seven years.

By integrating her own pregnancy into the plot of her sitcom, Lucille Ball broke the taboo against media representations of expecting celebrities, but despite her unprecedented candor during the nine months preceding the birth of "Little Ricky" on the "I Love Lucy" show, cast members never once uttered the forbidden word "pregnant," even when episodes revolved around Lucy getting stuck in chairs and experiencing uncontrollable cravings for ice cream and sardines. Compare such prudery to the openness of the present when photographs of celebrities' newborn children, illegitimate or not, are splashed across the pages of People and Vanity Fair, and bloggers speculate if Katie Holmes has "preggo boobs" and if it is premature to put Maggie Gyllenhaal on a "bump watch."

Hollywood actresses have always presented an image of smoldering female sensuality incompatible with the dull domestic routines of child rearing, a sexual hedonism freed of the unwanted consequences that our cinematic fantasies were once in flight from. Now, by contrast, public displays of the pedestrian responsibilities of family life are as vital to the star's media profile as appearances on the red carpet. The recent obsession with maternity is changing the face of Hollywood promiscuity, which has given way to a new conservative ethic, one in which fertility is a crucial component of a star's sexual magnetism.

The candor with which we address celebrity pregnancies, which many speculate originated with the famous 1991 Vanity Fair cover of a hugely pregnant and naked Demi Moore, would seem to mark a step forward in public attitudes toward sex. But, in fact, it may signal the rise of a new prudery on the part of the mass audience, which refuses to sanction the proverbial bed-hopping of the stars. Instead, it looks on approvingly -- almost certainly with a large measure of schadenfreude -- at their enthusiastic acceptance of the burdens of reproduction. Despite the salacious images celebrities project on the stage and in the movies, they have seldom been more wholesome. Far from being Jezebels and gigolos, they are dutiful moms and dads who, no sooner do they remove their costumes, than they dash off to their son's soccer match or throw birthday parties for their toddlers -- gala events that offer not only magic tricks and Mylar balloons, but, according to industry insiders, valet parking.

The recent obsession with high-profile pregnancies would never have occurred without significant advances in maternity fashions that have allowed celebrities to remain in the limelight well into their third trimester, all the while retaining a modicum of glamour. The messy physicality of fallen arches and protruding navels has been supplanted, or at least camouflaged, by an improbable new chic, the unanticipated consequence of the aggressive merchandising of procreation. In 1997, Liz Lange, a designer whose mission is to reinvent the whole look of maternity, began vigorously courting pregnant stars to wear her line of dresses. Other high-fashion collections for expanding waistlines followed, enabling celebrities to remain in the public eye all the way from their first sonogram to the onset of labor. Not only are pregnant stars better dressed than they have ever been before but their offspring are no longer puke-stained slobs in hand-knitted rompers and crocheted sun bonnets. Instead they're infantile fashionistas decked out in angora booties, bibs that cost $113, and two-ply cashmere chenille sweaters that start at $165.

Pregnancy has long rid itself of the stigma of shame, but recently a higher level of candor has been achieved, a lack of reserve that has effectively ended the state of retirement mothers were once forced to endure out of ladylike bashfulness. This deliverance from restrictive propriety has been accelerated by the career needs of a group of professionals who retreat into voluntary seclusion only at the peril of their most precious asset, their fame, which cannot withstand even a few months' neglect. Because of the requirements of exposure -- and because this media attention makes them the perfect manikins for product placement -- celebrities are in the vanguard of the new commerce of pregnancy, which has transformed nine months of nausea, sore breasts and frequent urination into a 40-week photo op.

It is not just the radical intervention of high fashion into maternity that is fueling the current obsession with celebrity pregnancies. A more powerful stimulus is what lies beneath the clothing, the body itself, which has never been so vulnerable to public scrutiny now that celebrities starve themselves into skeletal wraiths whose emaciation reveals even the slightest swelling. Stars are constantly fighting to protect their privacy in a game that is as much a tease as it is an expression of genuine reticence, a never-ending round of hide-and-seek that generates a staggering amount of litigation, much of which is a mere pretense, a transparent gambit for publicity. The cult of the pregnant star represents a deeper penetration of this privacy, which has now escalated from mere surveillance to a psychotic episode of stalking.

As their progesterone levels soar, their very cravings become matters of public record, as in the case of Toni Braxton, who for nine months pined for Doritos and Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats; Victoria Beckham, who battened on smoked salmon; and Angelina Jolie, who stuffed herself with Reese's Pieces, which she had flown into Namibia from the Hershey factory in Pennsylvania. What's more, we download their pirated sonograms from the Web and even submit our favorite personalities to probing gynecological exams. Consider the National Enquirer, which travels like a scope through Jennifer Lopez's allegedly barren womb, taking us on a tour of her entire reproductive tract: "Doctors injected a dye into Jennifer's fallopian tubes, where a blockage was discovered. The pressure of the dye injection opened the blockage. She was also put on the fertility drug Clomid to boost her production of eggs." So deep is the spell of Hollywood on the mass audience that it has turned us into amateur internists and obstetricians, crazed anatomists who seek a perverse intimacy with our divinities, attempting to narrow the physical distance that divides us, reaching out through photographs and gossip columns to touch their bodies, measuring the motility of their sperm and the thickness of their uterine walls.

Next page: Children have become a necessary accessory of fame