The art of the secret pregnancy
Long after lockdown, celebrities have managed to shield their baby bumps from the paparazzi. Here’s how.
Whenever they leave the house, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are photographed by paparazzi, producing images that fans closely analyse for clues about their interior lives. So many were surprised in August this year to learn that Ashley had just had a baby.
A secret pregnancy? In this day and age?
It turns out the Olsen twin isn’t the only star deft in the art of concealment. Others include Kylie Jenner, who kept her first pregnancy under wraps until after her daughter Stormi Webster was born in February 2018, and Mindy Kaling, who emerged mid-pandemic with a second child.
When Scarlett Johansson’s husband, comedian and Saturday Night Live cast member Colin Jost, posted a birth announcement for their child on Instagram, he did so with the hashtag #wegotawaywithitforalongtime.
Back in the day, celebrities’ baby bumps were everywhere, from Demi Moore posing nude for Vanity Fair in 1991 to Beyonce’s 2011 performance at the MTV Video Music Awards. But the era of the splashy baby announcement seems to be in the rear-view.
“Today, due to social media, there’s never a moment for (celebrities) to just disappear into their everyday lives,” says Chris Chambers, chief executive and founder of the Chamber Group, which handles publicity for Erykah Badu and Mariah Carey. He says having a good bodyguard can help preserve a semblance of privacy.
“That person would know where to stand, where to walk with their client” to block pictures being taken by paparazzi, he says. Another tactic: “Take content before the body starts changing, and use that,” he says. For example, Jenner posted older, unpublished photos of herself over the course of her first pregnancy. She also limited public appearances and wore baggy clothing when she did go out. After giving birth – to Stormi in 2018 and son Aire last year – Jenner posted video compilations of each pregnancy.
Surrogacy accounts for some of these surprise reveals. Paris Hilton, Riley Keough and Chrissy Teigen have said they used surrogates to have their children.
Luna PR founder Lauren Auslander represents famous mothers including Zooey Deschanel, Keke Palmer and Jessica Simpson. For clients hoping to keep their pregnancies quiet, she says she recommends seeking out doctors with private garage entrances or discreet locations. “When there’s public speculation on a given talent, photos command a higher bounty, so the paparazzi is incentivised to get those shots” at an OB-GYN’s office or otherwise, she says.
Wardrobe can play a key role. Alyce Peeler, who runs the Instagram fan account @Olsenoracle, says Ashley Olsen often wears oversized clothing from The Row, the label she oversees with her twin sister, so it was par for the course that she wore a really big coat all six times she was photographed this year.
“There was a point during Sex and the City where Sarah Jessica Parker was pregnant, and they would just always have her carrying a large bag in front of her,” stylist and wardrobe consultant Allison Bornstein says. Olsen often guarded her torso with a brown bowler bag from The Row.
Olsen’s outfits always have multiple points of interest, Bornstein says – different textured bags or a cool earring that draws attention away from the torso. “You’re training the eye to look in different places,” says Bornstein.
A representative for Olsen declined to comment for this article.
Celebrities aren’t the only people taking such measures in the social-media age. Fatima and Alex Smith, content creators living outside of Atlanta, frequently share photos and videos of their family and home renovations on Instagram. But when Fatima was expecting their fourth child and experiencing complications, they decided to keep it to themselves.
“I was pretty strategic about it,” Fatima says. She wore baggy clothes to conceal her body and found angles that hid her bump in photos. Until the couple FaceTimed their extended family and friends following baby Noah’s birth, their parents were the only people who knew he was on the way.
To be sure, some celebrities are still announcing their pregnancies in dramatic fashion. Miles Diggs, a celebrity photographer who goes by Diggzy, is known for capturing Rihanna and A$AP Rocky’s first pregnancy reveal. (Her second took place in midair during this year’s Super Bowl halftime show.) He says for photographers, breaking the news of an A-lister’s pregnancy can command a higher fee than a standard street-style photo of the same person.
He thinks a very famous celebrity is currently hiding her pregnancy, wearing coats and other oversized clothing, Olsen-style.
“This person is also editing photos that are publicly out there from red carpet appearances in a way so that at least on their social media it doesn’t look as pregnant as it would to the naked eye,” Diggs says. “Fan groups on Twitter are catching on.”
The way he sees it, hiding a pregnancy is pretty easy, even for the most famous people today.
“Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, they have every ability to disappear like most of these stars if they choose to,” he says. “If you want to get a house and live in Montana, you can, and nobody will ever see you there.”
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