Our Baby Bump Obsession

"Hollywood's Pregnant," screamed the headline of the supermarket tabloid. "Who's expecting, who's not, who's desperately trying."

To which at least some of us must add: "Who cares?"

The answer seems to be, "Anyone with $3.99 to their name." How else to explain this summer's Brangelina baby photos fetching a reported $14 million from People magazine? In 2006, People supposedly paid $4.1 million for the first pix of Brad and Angelina's other biological baby, Shiloh. Sure, this time People got a twofer because the kids are twins. But in just two years, the price shot up $10 million. Babies are hot.

If anything, they're even hotter before they're born. Who'd ever heard the cute-as-morning-sickness phrase "baby bump" until about 10 years ago? I hadn't, even when my own bump looked like Rachel Ray. Now the bump's right up there with the Birkin bag — an accessory every tabloid feels compelled to comment on. "Is that a baby bump?" "Proudly displaying her baby bump ... " Or sometimes it's just an arrow excitedly pointing, "The bump," — as if they've found Osama.

Now, obviously, part of the fascination stems from the simple fun of seeing stars fat. And afterward, there's the fascination with how fast it melts off. How does it melt off that fast? But since most pregnant People people look pretty darn perfect no matter what month they're in, it's not just about plus sizes. Something else is fueling our stalker-like obsession with their gestation.

"Celebrities are bigger than life, better than you, and generally more important," a 24-year-old head of his own public relations firm, Tyler Barnett, said. "When two celebs combine forces and fluids, the only logical result is a superhuman being." Being the aforementioned 24 years of age, Mr. Barnett added, "Duh."

Well, duh, yes I know that we worship celebs and it's the ultimate science fair project to see them recombine. But they've been recombining since Bogey and Bacall and no one really cared about their babies or the nine months preceding them. True, we couldn't get much info on them even if we wanted to back then, but maybe that was better for all of us. I'm sure it was better for the baby Bogarts.

Today, with all the TV shows, magazines, and Web sites like d-listed.com and Perez Hilton, the Web log seemingly devoted to pictures of celebrities in Ace bandages — See? They sprain just like us. — we swim in celeb minutiae. Page 2 of my National Enquirer shows Julianne Moore playing peek-a-boo with her daughter. Page 2.

If that's news, then naturally nine whole months of pregnancy is pure tabloid gold. "It is an event with the potential to carry a lot of stories — the bump, the birth, the name, the baby shower — as opposed to a one-time DUI," a psychotherapist, Rebecca Roy-Jarboe, said. And since we're so involved with celebrities' lives already, their babies are almost "our babies," she said.

And that is the real root of our fascination. We are reacting to these women as if they were close relatives, or even us. And since, in everyday, regular-schlub life, pregnancies are getting ever more attention, America's famous-fetus-focus is just part of the whole child-centric world we're caught up in.

Think about how, "What to Expect When You're Expecting" has sold millions upon millions. That breakthrough book obsesses about every broccoli floret a mom-to-be eats (good mommy) or forswears (bad mommy). Its success inspired even more obsessive books like, "Your Pregnancy Week by Week." "There is nothing more exciting than keeping up with the drastic changes your body undergoes on a weekly basis," a blurb for the book says.

Those are the same "drastic changes" the tabloids are keeping up with. Never mind that on the outside they're about as dramatic as slo-mo Jiffy Pop. Never mind that keeping track of things by trimesters used to be detailed enough. Everything about our children has become fodder for fascination, even in utero. Think of all the ultrasounds stuck to refrigerator doors.

That's why these days, it has become hard to tell if you're reading a supermarket tabloid or Gynecology Today. This one had IVF, this one took fertility drugs ... .

Of course, it's possible our fascination may also have a darker side. When we emphasize the importance of stars' pregnancies and motherhood, we are reducing them to their most basic, biological beings. And there is certainly something reprehensible (and shadenfreude-y) about headlines like, "Eva 'Desperate' To Get Pregnant."

But mostly, we are dwelling on pregnant celebrities for the same reason we are dwelling on our own — and dwelling on every moment after the child arrives, too. Children are not just our future. They're our hobby, our status, our conversational calling cards, our Second Lives.

Brangelina's just happen to be better earners.

Lskenazy@yahoo.com