In January 2022 Rihanna dropped photos from her maternity shoot in NYC. Remember how the internet went berserk with the pregnancy announcement and became obsessed with following her journey? Well, that’s what the collective cultural obsession with the celeb baby bump has us doing. Celebrity pregnancies have become a huge topic of discussion and our obsession can be considered pretty unhealthy. 

I remember this (and this is the post-Taimur era), when Anushka Sharma announced her pregnancy, I was called in on a day off to write about the pregnancy announcement. Twitter was flooded with posts about Sharma and Virat Kohli, with ‘Dil Shagna Da’ playing in the background, but then came something more dreadful. The couple was chased down by paps for pictures, their private moments were ruined just because the audience had to be constantly fed information, and they had to be extra cautious so to keep their private lives..private. 

It did not stop at that. When the parents decided to keep their baby away from the limelight, the media did not respect that. Despite the requests, many pictures were clicked and circulated by fans.  

While some celebs don’t embrace this growing fondness fans display about anything and everything they do, others give audience just what they need. Take Kareena Kapoor Khan, for example, she has never shied away from little Jeh being clicked, and she posts pictures of the little one. Simply put, Kapoor Khan understood the assignment. 

Another example of this would be RiRi. She got everyone thinking that she was expecting a girl. She made glam appearances and flaunted her baby bump whenever she could, and knowing that she was being clicked at a store, she always picked clothes for a girl. In a surprise twist for fans, her baby boy’s arrival was announced recently.

Sonam Kapoor also announced her pregnancy a few weeks ago. This brough about tweets and Instagram posts about the couple, proving that we are simply too invested in celebrities and tracking their pregnancy journey. Sophie Turner is one celeb who has had enough of this She lashed out on paparazzi for leaking pictures of her daughter. Gigi Hadid is another celebrity who has kept her daughter away from the limelight.

So where do we draw the line? Does the fact that they are public figures mean that we have the right to intrude into all aspects of their life? Do we still chase and scrutinise stars about how they are handling their pregnancies, or ignore all requests when they ask for privacy?

(Featured Image Credits: Instagram)