This is the future Andy Warhol talked about. “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes,” he said. Warhol never specified the individual’s chosen path to the spotlight. Within the glitter and scramble, a rare type of celebrity is emerging; that of the random celeb with curious knack for making the headlines a la the ubiquitous pregnancy bump.
Language is not powerful enough to describe the baby bump phenomenon. A glance behind the glitter usually reveals a hankering for relevance or innate yearning to hug the headlines. This no doubt validates veteran film maker, Warhol’s famous prediction of 1968 on one hand and establishes the reality of contemporary celebrity on the other.
It is the reason random pregnant celebrities strip off their clothes – with a few ones going completely nude – to expose their protruding tummies.
The rate at which local celebrities discard their clothing to reveal the bare skin covering their embryos would leave the conservative gasping for breath and clutching at norms with frenetic speed. The roll call of local female celebrities who are subscribing to this cultural import from Europe and America has become worrisome to folks who believe a woman’s femininity is best preserved and motherhood better ennobled if the contemporary woman could endeavour to keep her hidden graces covered and shielded from the glare of an increasingly nosy and narcissistic world.
Just recently, Dior Chidera Adiele shocked her fans and raised serious eyebrows by posing completely nude for a photo shoot celebrating her baby bump. The Nollywood actress, in a bold move, flaunted her huge baby bump completely nude like publicity-seeking actresses do in Hollywood. No one had dared posing nude with baby bump until Adiele and worries are, the bug will catch on very soon among the nation’s publicity-seeking celebrities.
Probably lacking the courage and daring of Adiele, Kaffy Ameh, otherwise known as Kaffy the Dance Queen, unclothed her belly to show off her baby bump to the world before she put to bed. And the roll keeps increasing to include more celebrities or wanna-be celebrities. Others that have unclothed their bellies and hidden graces to the world include Liz, wife of Nigerian photographer, Yemi Black; Nollywood actresses, Tonto Dike and Uche Iwuanyanwu, who recently gave birth to a baby boy in the United States (US).
Oby Edozie, also an actress and wife of 1990s’ music star, Alex O, also shared photos showing her son and her bulged baby bump before the delivery of her baby girl on Sunday, February 8, 2015. The list also includes actresses Chacha Eke and Ufuoma Ejenobor.
While fans of the celebrities justify their proclivities to show off their nude baby bumps, an alternative school of thought considers it at variance with the African culture. Moralists believe the increasing fascination of Nigerian celebrities with the imported baby bump voyeurism and the reciprocal lust accorded their hankering for acclaim by their fans and media audience, poses inimical challenges to the preservation of Nigerian norms and culture.
“I personally don’t agree with showing off to the world your bumps in nude when you are pregnant; even the majority of the white people that our celebrities are copying, do not like it. I have many American and European friends and they consider it childish and in bad taste,” stated Olabisi Fowosere, a luxury goods importer and mother of three.
Corroborating her, Agnes Okoli, a US-based psychologist, argued that it is “unarguably silly” for a woman to expose her pregnancy to the world, “all in the name of subscribing with an alien and decadent culture.”
“Why would a woman see the need to take a nude picture of her pregnancy and post it on the internet for the whole world to see? You could take that nude picture and send it to your husband privately but posting it on the web indicates a deep sense of insecurity, vanity and low self-esteem of the woman involved. It’s like she is desperately seeking publicity and public approval of her state and femininity. Such people need help,” she said.
There is no gainsaying the fact that one of the trendiest aspects of contemporary celebrity gossip culture is the ‘Celebrity Baby Bump.’ Fans of famous people have developed an abiding attraction for it. Like 21st century voyeurs, they love to look at it. They obsess about it and even more intriguingly, they love to analyse it.
As foreign celebrities, Kim Kardashian and Kate Middleton prove, pregnant stars sell magazines. But how does that exposure affect the pregnant Nigerian female celebrities and their random groupies seeking to toe their path and expose their hidden graces? A recent study from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand provides an answer, and it’s not positive.
The researchers found that when a pregnant woman exhibits an interest in pregnant celebrities as well as a high concern for her physical appearance, she is likely to experience reduced levels of prenatal attachment. Translation: Those “baby bump” headlines are not only hurting your body image; they also might be severing the natural bonds between women and their babies-to-be.
“If you look at pregnant celebrities, they’re shown wearing bikinis late in pregnancy, and they’ve still got a beautiful figure with just this little kind of pregnancy ‘bump,’” Dr. Jayne Krisjanous, Ph.D., one of the authors of the study from the School of Marketing and International Business at Victoria University of Wellington, said.
Krisjanous, a former midwife, and her research partners, James E. Richard and Aaron Gazley, surveyed 468 women during their first pregnancies to examine their pre-existing values, attitudes and lifestyle behaviours as they related to pregnant celebrity media consumption.
In the study, they honed in on body image, using the survey answers to measure five factors: usual concern for physical appearance; pregnant celebrity attraction; pregnancy weight worry; pregnancy body image dissatisfaction; and, of course, prenatal attachment, defined as a relationship in which the mother seeks “to know, to be with, to avoid separation or loss, to protect, and to identify and gratify the needs of her fetus.” This information allowed Krisjanous and her co-authors to look at each woman and determine the “extent to which the respondent is excited by, anticipates and enjoys the process of being pregnant and the changes happening to her body.”
Ultimately, the study showed an alarming link between attraction to celebrity pregnancy and disruption in prenatal attachment. This effect was seen in those concerned about appearance and gaining weight during pregnancy. The study found that pregnant women who more closely follow pregnant celebrities, along with other factors, were more likely to have body image issues and stress regarding weight gain, something a lot of moms already deal with. But the researchers also found it had another effect. The research revealed that it causes lower prenatal attachment, better known as “the feelings of attachment or love a mother feels for her developing baby during a pregnancy”.
While the result of the research may not be said to be truly representative of the impact of baby bump voyeurism on pregnant mothers, it offers interesting perspectives about the effect of celebrity culture on contemporary society.
