(no subject)

First, a justification: I would like to pretend, on occasion, that I am too enlightened to give a rat's patoot about what celebrities buy for their babies, and when and where they have them. Alas for my high-minded detachment, I grocery shop. If you can get out of the grocery store these days without running the celebrity and demi-celebrity pregnancy gauntlet, you are either shopping in higher class joints than I am or you aren't buying anything.

The quality of reportage in this area is ludicrously low, possibly because if you are *really* famous, the accepted means of handling your pregnancy is to deny it until the fifth month, and refuse all interviews after you enter the third trimester. (Unless you are Tom Cruise, in which case, you spend the pregnancy with your fingers crossed, hoping the baby will be late enough to allow you to claim that you implanted your spawn in the host-mother after holding a press conference to announce your engagement, and not before.) The things the magazines say may be entirely made up (Angelina is having twin girls! Jamie-Lynn had an emergency c-section!), and are sometimes extremely bizarre - as the claim that Gavin Rossdale "dropped off" Gwen Stafani at the hospital for her planned c-section. He dropped her off? Did he stay for the surgery? Did he even get out of the car? Where was he when his child was born? Or did he just pull around for parking? (Does Cedars-Sinai not have valet?)

If you are famous (or if you ever were famous, if your sister is famous, if you were a child actor in the eighties and need to make a buck now), your third trimester is one long, imminent emergency. You spend it glowing, shopping for baby gear, refusing interviews and trembling on the edge of gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia and premature labor. During this time, your husband or partner may express his awe at how gorgeous you are, and his concern for your health. He may not express anything else. Your partner (who is male, or you are not in the magazines) is barely allowed to speak during your pregnancy lest he incite suspicion that he is Tom Cruise. If you are pregnant and famous, you are considered to be ill. Any attempt to engage in your normal activities (like walking to places where you cannot buy things, or living with toddlers) will be met with disapproval and concern.

If you are famous, it is Too Dangerous for you to even contemplate a vaginal birth. You may set up a bush hospital in Africa to assure your privacy, but the baby will be delivered surgically. If the delivery is not surgical, the tabs will claim that you are putting your baby at risk. They will possibly invent emergency surgery to write about even if no such thing happens to you.

In real life, among the non-famous, the third trimester is usually boring. You have had all the exciting ultrasounds, and gotten all the information you are going to get from them. Your OB appointments are ten minutes on an exam table, with two different metrics by which you can observe that you are getting faster. You may outgrow your maternity clothes. The highlight is watching the baby kick. The only way that the third trimester isn't pretty dull to watch is if you are ill, which is why Us Weekly wants to claim, if you're famous, that that's what you are. Real illness is not cute. Real illness probably precludes you from strolling around Beverly Hills while a handsome man holds your handbag and Us Weekly retains a doctor you have never met to advise you to lie down.

I wouldn't mind so much if these things didn't dominate the public conversation on pregnancy, encouraging women to disregard any information they receive that doesn't treat with either anxiety or shopping.

Personal Safety in the Twentieth Century

My international business textbook contains about half a page of precautionary instructions for businesspeople traveling abroad who are concerned about threats like kidnapping.

I have no plans to travel abroad. After reading this half-page, I am planning to hide under my bed and never come out ever again, so discussing my planned visits to South America in front of Cuban dockhands on a fishing trip out of Miami and subsequently being held for ransom in El Salvador won't be a problem for me. It won't happen.

I appreciate that the textbook publishers want to give students this information, and I will certainly make sure that any business cards given to me do not contain the initials "CIA" anywhere on them for any reason. (How likely is it, though, that I'll need business cards under the bed?) I just think, if it's going to be there, it should be up to date. That half-page is reprinted from an article published in 1986. "Look in an encyclopedia..." "Have your company acquire a telephone directory for the State Department from the Government Printing Office." If ever I am held for ransom in El Salvador, it will be because I spilled the details of my trip on the internet.