Can Rachel Zoe Get Pregnant?

This season of Rachel’s show has focused on whether she can make time in her schedule for her ticking biological clock. Yet nobody has addressed the elephant in the room: whether or not she weighs enough to get pregnant.

On last night’s episode, Rachel hung out with her client Kate Hudson, whose free-spirited, easy-going nature has a positive effect on the stylist. And as it has on every episode this season, the topic of baby-making was raised.

But before she gets to those kids, we learn that Rachel never wears bikinis and never goes in the water. She says that this is because she’s “frigid,” but last week the audience was also treated to much discussion of Rachel’s refusal to wear lingerie. Yes, a woman can just hate bikinis and lingerie and always feel chilly. But if you’ve been following the show over time, these are just two more of the several moments that hint at Rachel’s discomfort with her body.

In previous seasons, Rachel and her husband Rodger have expressed their desire to start a family, but this season has featured an ongoing debate of when they should. But it seems that the show — which in the past has not shied away from talking about Rachel’s body and her physical health — is pushing this storyline forward while sidestepping the very real question of whether or not its star is physically capable of heading down that path.

What is now an elephant wasn’t always thus. Rachel’s show has prominently featured the bad press she receives for her thin figure, and the lengths to which she goes to try to mask it. In another episode, Rachel admitted to a doctor on camera — at the urging of her husband — that she doesn’t eat enough. These aspects of Rachel’s life were neither glamorized nor vilified; they were touched on or mentioned but not plot-dominating issues. A semblance of honesty, no matter how understated, is not a bad thing.

This is not an attack on Rachel’s appearance, nor is it a criticism of her own engagement in body snarking, and it’s not a comment on her highly-publicized association with size-zero actresses. Yes, those elements are all in the Zoe Ether. But what we’re concerned with discussing is the practical question of fertility, and in what condition a woman’s body needs to be in order to conceive. Giuliana Rancic has been open about her problems with getting pregnant, disclosing that a doctor told her that she needs to gain weight, but she says doing so conflicts with her on-camera job (of interviewing celebrities about their diets).

My issue has nothing, really, to do with Zoe herself — her private life, off-camera, is her business. But to everyone else involved in the creation of the show, let’s cut the bullshit. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that the bikini conversation led into one about having children.