Fetal Attraction

"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 his 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. That's worse than gas!

Fact is: 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 Rachael Ray. Now every tabloid reports breathlessly, "Is that a baby bump?" Or, "Proudly displaying her baby bump …" Or sometimes they just show 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 because most pregnant People people look pretty darn perfect no matter what month they're in, it's not just about plus sizes.

"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, Barnett added, "Duh."

Well, duh, 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.

Now it's 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," psychotherapist Rebecca Roy-Jarboe said. And because we're so involved with celebrities' lives already, she added, their babies are almost "our babies."

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 because — in everyday, regular-schlub life — pregnancies are getting ever-more attention, America's famous-fetus focus is just part of the whole childcentric 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, such as "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 whether you're reading a supermarket tabloid or Gynecology Today. This one had IVF; this one took fertility drugs. … Pretty soon we're going to see their kids at the eight-cell stage. (It looks just like Brad!)

We are dwelling on celebrities' pregnancies 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 card, our Second Life.

Brangelina's just happen to be better earners.

Lenore Skenazy is a columnist at The New York Sun and Advertising Age. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.