Loading...
Browsing Tag

Watching and Wanting the Celebrity Baby Bump

I’m Not Sure If I Agree With This Author’s Assessment about the Evil of Celebrity ‘Bump Watch’

celeb-bump-watch

The Atlantic interviewed the Drake University professor who wrote a book about the celebrity baby bump watch craze. In the October 2015 book,  Pregnant with Stars, Watching and Wanting the Celebrity Baby Bump (The Cultural Lives of Law), Renée Ann Cramer, an Associate Professor and Chair of Law, Politics and Society at Drake, examines the American fascination with, and judgment of, celebrity pregnancy.

The piece launches with Cramer’s response to Beyonce‘s twin pregnancy. Cramer gives her perspective that the celebrity bump watch phenomenon is part of a proverbial “pregnancy industrial complex.”  Cramer analyzed Beyonce’s pregnancy with Blue Ivy in her book.

According to the description of Cramer’s  book in Amazon, Kramer “exposes how our seemingly innocent interest in “baby bumps” actually reinforces troubling standards about femininity, race, and class, while increasing the surveillance and regulation of all women in our society.”

To do so, she compares media coverage of pregnant celebrities, including Jennifer Garner, Angelina Jolie, Beyoncé Knowles, Kristen Bell, M.I.A., Jodie Foster, and Mila Kunis, and then applies sociology pedagogy to criticize said media coverage.

Essentially, she blames bump watch articles for promoting unattainable post-baby bodies, something I’ve blogged about often over the past few years. But Cramer goes further. She actually makes a tremendous leap to link bump coverage with government control of women’s bodies, I suppose via social and legal regulations surrounding access to birth control and abortions, and the like.

It seems to me to be a tenuous connection to say “frivolous celebrity gossip” is part of a larger, and perhaps, covert strategy to control survey, commodification of and control women’s bodies.

I disagree.

I think pop culture and society’s obsession with celebrity pregnancy is just part of the admiration and hero-worship of stars, in general.  It’s just among the newest aspect of celebrity life to become enamored with, nothing more. The media cover what the people want to see. And when we see them click more links on bump watch, guess what, we post more.

The people express interest in it and they click articles about baby bumps, and the gossip rags and blogs, including this one, report on what the people want. It’s symbiotic.

In the Atlantic article, Cramer makes racial distinctions in the coverage and suggests that pregnancies of women of color are hypersexualized and less favorable than of white celebrities.

As a person who has covered celebrities and monitored the other sites coverage, I question that  assessment.  The media coverage is the same for the most part, in my opinion.

What is different is how the pubic reacts. It may be different because a lot of members of the general population already view Beyonce and Jennifer Lopez, for example, as sexual people. These women are sexy and their performance on stage and their clothing is revealing and we talk a lot about their bodies as their bodies are part of their image, their craft and their public persona.

Mila Kunis and Jennifer Garner are not known for that.

Also, celebrities of color aren’t given that much mainstream gossip press that is why niche sites like this one, Black Celeb Kids and Latina magazine fill in the void and the coverage of celebrity pregnancy in our sites are usually more positive.

I do agree that societal views of pregnancy are shaped by what people see when they read media articles about celebrity pregnancies, but I am not wholly convinced that there is a connection with control over women’s bodies. Perhaps, I will read the book and see if there is more to the analysis but from the synopsis and the Atlantic interview, I’m not buying it.

 

 

Batman138 Bro138 Dolar138 Gas138 Gudang138 Hoki99 Ligaciputra Panen77 Zeus138 Kilat77 Planet88 Gaspol168 Sikat88 Rupiah138 Garuda138 Gacor77 Roma77 Sensa138 Panen138 Slot138 Gaco88 Elanggame Candy99 Cair77 Max7 Best188 Space77 Sky77 Luxury777 Maxwin138 Bosswin168 Cocol88 Slot5000 Babe138 Luxury138 Jet77 Bonanza138 Bos88 Aquaslot Taktik88 Lord88 Indobet Slot69 Paus138 Tiktok88 Panengg Bingo4d Stars77 77dragon Warung168 Receh88 Online138 Tambang88 Asia77 Klik4d Bdslot88 Gajah138 Bigwin138 Markas138 Yuk69 Emas168 Key4d Harta138  Gopek178 Imbaslot Imbajp Deluna4d Luxury333 Pentaslot Luxury111 Cair77 Gboslot Pandora188 Olxtoto Slotvip Eslot Kuy138 Imbagacor Bimabet