Pregnancy porn is addictive. In some respects it's such a humanizing relief, these glimpses of women we're used to seeing perfect and fat-free suddenly walking down the street in ill-fitting clothes looking like their breasts are about to leak. How about the groans of sympathy for that flaxen sylph Paltrow, who pushed out Apple at 9 pounds 11 ounces? Oof, we thought, clucking with the knowledge that birth isn't like maintaining a hot body and a cool wardrobe: There were no personal chefs or free designer clothes paving a comfortable shortcut for this bruiser of an infant's journey from womb to world.

It's also empowering. Liz Lange, the high-end maternity-wear designer who started her business in 1997, argued that the confidence of being able to look good and remain visible is what's created the illusion of a baby boomlet to begin with. "It's not that people are getting married more or having babies more," Lange said. "It's that we gave them something to wear so that when you get pregnant you don't just sit those nine months out. You go to all the fabulous glamorous parties you were always going to." Lange could be talking about Catherine Zeta-Jones, who in 2003 not only attended the Oscars, but sang and danced through her musical number from "Chicago" at a glorious stage of pregnancy that looked to be closely associated with the words "four centimeters dilated." That bra-busting appearance earned Zeta-Jones pats on the back and a lot of attention, though the adulation was dulled a bit by the online appearance, several weeks later, of photos of the actress in the last days of pregnancy, stark naked and sucking on a cigarette.

Both sets of images of Zeta-Jones generated wild interest from a reading, gawking public-- an interest that fuels the unending battle between the celebrity news-organs vying to publish the prettiest, ugliest, sexiest, fattest, most disheveled, most intimate, most revealing, most eye-catching images they can find. It's easy to imagine that we are only a uterus-cam away from seeing Zegna-clad sperm meet Dolce and Gabbana-clad ovum. "This is a market situation," said People editor Nelson. "It's not that the world has suddenly changed and people care about celebrity babies more than before; it's that there are more magazines being published that devote space to it. And that means that there are more people going after those stories."

A recent Los Angeles Times article about pregnancy coverage suggested that the increased market for paparazzi photographs of pregnant stars has led to the defensive "domestication" of otherwise reticent personalities. It's true that some new celebrity parents, like Sarah Jessica Parker or Cox-Arquette, have scheduled photo-ops or sent pictures to the press in the hope of fending off unexpected intrusions. But Joe Dolce, editor of the Star, said that they're not exactly knocking down his doors handing out cigars. "We work very hard to get these photographs," he said. "Actually, the paparazzi work very hard to get these photographs; we bid very hard to buy them." He commented, "I never know whether the appetite began first and the coverage caught up, or whether the coverage began first and that created an appetite. It doesn't matter to me. In this world, pregnancy is considered news, and it is a nine-month news cycle."

The length of that cycle means that there is more time for readers to become invested in the narrative. It's a saga we can follow along with, making it intensely more satisfying than a one-off celebrity wedding, already weeks over by the time pictures of the 12-tier wedding cake make it to magazines. A weekly publication can rely on a pregnancy to provide pages of melodrama, physical transformation, prenatal-care news, and brand-name baby wish lists sanctioned by celebrities. In Touch's news director Dan Wakeford said, "It's great for service-y weeklies. There are the first signs, the cravings, the weight worries, the possible problems, preparing for the baby, the shower, and then finally baby itself. It really is a soap opera of someone's life we can get involved with." Wakeford said that one of his magazine's top-selling covers of the year featured the baby dramas faced by Cox-Arquette (infertility), Debra Messing (enforced bed rest), and Paltrow (should she give birth in London or New York?).

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