Salon writer Nico Lang gives praise to Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling for being super private about their spawning offsprings. He also gives a pretty good run down on the “bumpwatch” and celebrity baby industry which is a multi-million dollar industry. It is not all damning, here is an excerpt:
Call it a win for privacy in the digital age, but even more than that, it’s heartening to see parents opt out of the toxic culture of celebrity baby worship that demands constant updates about famous offspring. Every single one of us should follow their lead.
This is an industry that treats children like corporate mergers, fashion icons, and objects of an almost religious devotion before they can even walk or talk, let alone sign an endorsement deal. When Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony gave birth to twins in 2008, they pulled in what was then a record sum for the first photos of a celebrity couple’s children: $6 million. That total would be eclipsed within months. Knox and Vivienne, the fraternal twins of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, would quickly become household names from the moment they were born. Their debut into the limelight—courtesy of People magazine—netted $15 million. That’s more than most movies make in their opening weekend.
But no financial impact was more massive than the Royal Baby, an infant whose coming was such a media sensation that Prince George’s July 2013 birth was estimated to generate $400 million in revenue for the U.K. economy. For celebrity news websites, the young royal’s birth signaled a boom time after a long drought:According to the New York Times, US Weekly had the biggest traffic day in its website’s history on July 23, the day that new mother Kate Middleton finally vacated the hospital with her “bundle of baby joy.” The same was true for People’s site, which reported a nearly 50 percent boost in traffic on the very same day. The magazine’s print publication on the royal birth was its biggest-selling of the year.At the time, the editor of the gossip website Hollywood Life, Bonnie Fuller, predicted that Prince George would remain a cash cow for tabloid publishers. “The royal baby will become a regular beat, just like Shiloh and Suri were the babies of six years ago,” Fuller told the New York Times, also referring to Suri Holmes-Cruise, the now 10-year-old daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. “The two babies that Hollywood Life audiences are going to be obsessed with are going to be Prince George and Kim Kardashian’s baby, North West.” US Weekly editor Mike Steele called it the “royal baby boom.”
Read the rest HERE!