Christina Aguilera is on the cover of January's Marie Claire, buck nekked and pregnant as all get out. I think that since Demi Moore did it waaay back in 1991 for Vanity Fair, we've had the opportunity to see about 75 thousand naked pregnant celebrities in magazines. If you are old like me, you might remember that when Demi posed sans clothes for Annie Leibovitz, there was a big brouhaha. Was it empowering or exploitative? Should knocked up ladies be sexy? But that was the 90's. Now? Eh. But don't worry, I can still manage to work up some pissy anger over the whole thing.
Lord knows I have no problems with nudity (in fact I'm on the pro side of it) and sure, pregnant women can be sex symbols. Be my guest. But I'm starting to get irritated with the phenomenon because of course the burgeoning stars are given the same treatment as everyone in magazines, meaning they are airbrushed and shrunk down and reshaped into this bizarre aesthetic. (I'll add that Xtina is one of those celebs who gets the mighty computer treatment in almost every photo I've ever seen, so she looks like she's made of a strange polymer. She might be a pretty lady in true life, but it's hard to know what she actually looks like with all that retouchification.) And the result is that instead of all these pics being an affirmation of the sexy power of a woman 7 months along, we get an impossible, unrealistic, and frankly weird standard of beauty that pregnant women get to aspire to. Joy.
Stretch marks, the pregnant ass, weird pigmentation, swollen ankles--hey, that's a normal pregnancy for you. But the only things these stars show is a round belly and the bigger-than-before boobies. I'll give my undying love to any famous lady who poses naked in a magazine, far along in her pregnancy and untouched by computers. It might even be sexy.
