Like any expectant mother, Kai Walter, six months
pregnant, has lots to get done before the big day. One of her most important
errands: an upcoming trip to the West Coast, where she has an appointment to
take off her clothes and be photographed.
Not for some magazine cover, a la Demi Moore, but for her own personal
collection of pregnancy memories. The idea is to artistically capture her
blossoming belly in all its glory, something more and more women are doing these
days. Or they might be making a plaster "belly cast" of their changing form. Or
even consulting a "pregnancy stylist" to map out a cool, midriff-baring
maternity wardrobe.
Pregnancy, in short, has become hipper, more glamorous - sexy even. It
sure feels odd to think that way about something as basic as, well, the
propagation of the human race. And yet, fueled by an ever-spiraling interest in
the lives of our celebrities (one word: Brangelina) and a consumer culture
always coming up with new luxuries, the very act of reproduction appears to have
reinvented itself.
"It's hip now to be pregnant," says Jill Siefert, a fashion stylist in San
Francisco who recently added pregnancy styling to her business. "Everybody's
doing it."
Of course, everybody's always done it. It's just that we're hearing about it
so much more now — especially RIGHT now. Take the latest cover of People
(perhaps they should rename it Parents). Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, new
parents of Suri, are flanked by Gwyneth Paltrow and newborn Moses, and Donald
and Melania Trump with newborn Barron. Inside, Liv Tyler and Jon Stewart cavort
with their respective offspring, Matt Damon awaits his, Brooke Shields talks
about hers.
And this is only April. The coming months promise the birth of the Brad
Pitt-Angelina Jolie baby, still in utero but already presumed unprecedentedly
gorgeous. "Not since Jesus has a baby been so eagerly anticipated," New York
magazine wrote.
The fascination seems to stem from our generation's desire to see celebrities
as people just like us — almost part of the family, says University of
Mississippi magazine analyst Samir Husni: "All of a sudden the whole country has
become an aunt and uncle to these babies."
Sandra Leong, pregnant with her second child, has been affected by the
closeup view of celebrity pregnancies. "They are showing that it's OK to be big
and beautiful," says Leong. Now 34, she remembers the then-controversial 1991
Vanity Fair cover on which Demi Moore posed nude — at seven months pregnant.
"She was the icon," says Leong. "People thought, if she can bare her breasts and
belly to show her body changing, why can't I?"
So a year and a half ago, Leong hired photographer Jennifer Loomis to
document her first pregnancy. Loomis recalls that a decade ago, when she told
colleagues she wanted to make a business of such photo shoots, they laughed and
said, "Nobody's going to pay you to do that!"
Loomis has now photographed over 1,000 pregnant women from her bases in
Seattle, San Francisco and New York, using swaths of fabric and artful lighting
to celebrate each woman's curves, beginning at $750 per session. Since 2002, she
says, her business has quadrupled — and bookings in San Francisco have doubled
in only the last four months.