BellyitchBlog

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!

Jennifer-Lopez-Absence-in-2014-World-Cup-Ceremony

In 2007, I wrote a blog post about the “Bump Watch” phenomenon, generally, discussing it in context of when the tabloids, public and media are wrong. In 2010, I wrote about how Jennifer Aniston is the most bump watched female celebrity even though she’s never been pregnant. At the same time, I was one of the early blogs that speculated in a post as to whether Jennifer Lopez was pregnant given her choice of dress during a concert. (I was right).

I am in that space so I get the fascination. And we here at Bellyitch have a long-standing ongoing “bump watch” tradition of following and covering celebrity preganancies.

I do, also, recognize that people hate the term “bump watch” as well as “bump” and “baby bump.” It’s cool. No scene.

However, I think writer Rachel Kramer Bussel was going a weeee bit too far in her recent Salon commentary where she called bump watch anti-feminist and suggested we, as a society, should ban bump watch.

*Clutch the pearls!*

Bussel’s piece was a bit rambling and read like a stream of consciousness rant but I understand her thesis: the incessant watching of and obsession over a woman’s pooch is offensive and reductive of her value to society outside of procreating.

In her post, Bussel bemoans how insulting it is when women are asked if they are pregnant when they may have just had one too many chicken wings the night before.

I can dig it, right. I support women’s liberation and rights. I am a woman after all and I do and have benefited from all the work that my feminist and womanist sisters have done over the years.

Notwithstanding all of that…. I still think Bussel goes overboard in her rant.

I dunno. Head over to Salon and have a read and let me know your thoughts.

Salon

Writer Gives Props to Eva Mendes & Ryan Gosling for Shunning the ‘Bumpwatch’ Craze

Writer suggests society bans ‘Bump Watch’