Fake Bump Conspiracy Theories Prove That Americans Still Can’t Handle Public Pregnancy

The decorous woman hid her swelling body, and the sexual relationship it implied. The polite term for pregnancy was “confinement,” said Epstein, “because they wanted you confined in your home. And then you stayed that way for months after.” One woman who’d given birth in 1944 reported in Epstein’s book, Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth From the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank, that her doctor had advised that only after eight days postpartum would it be safe for her to “dangle”—dangle her feet over the edge of the bed.

Now, the pendulum has swung sharply in the opposite direction, from an American maternal ideal demanding prolonged confinement and to a nation in which the wealthy often jockey to demonstrate that they’ve swiftly “bounced back” from birth. Expectations for public roles during pregnancy have shifted for poorer women as well. Until the seventies, employers could mandate extended unpaid maternity leaves that banished pregnant women and new mothers from the workforce. Today, in the absence of national paid family leave, a quarter of American women return to their jobs within two weeks of giving birth.

Anxieties around these evolving norms played out in the public sphere long before internet sleuths could trawl through celeb social media accounts, searching for baby bumps that looked suspiciously like pillows. Lucille Ball, who delivered via C-section on the exact date that her television alter-ego gave birth, famously included her real-life pregnancy on her show I Love Lucy. The decision was controversial enough that the production team ran each of the storyline’s scripts by a priest, a minister, and a rabbi, and the word “pregnant” itself was never used onscreen. Decades later, Annie Liebowitz’s 1991 Vanity Fair cover photo of a very pregnant Demi Moore, posing nude save her wedding ring, again sparked controversy. Even for these famous, straight, married, wealthy, thin, and conventionally attractive white women, efforts to make pregnancy public could be fraught.

As pregnancy has become more visible, it’s also become more publicly scrutinized. Women are now expected to “get their bodies back” after birth, feeling pressured to gain the bare minimum of weight during pregnancy, and to shed it almost instantly. This wasn’t always the case; in earlier generations, concern about one’s physical appearance was considered out of step with the ideal of total maternal self-abnegation. Today’s pregnant people have been able to narrowly reclaim the right to self-interest, but it doesn’t seem to extend far beyond the freedom to force their bodies into compliance.

The postpartum double bind

On Selling Sunset’s latest season, a majority of the praise Quinn’s castmates directed towards her were congratulations at her maintenance of her thin figure, for looking nearly identical to her pre-motherhood self soon after giving birth. The very leanness that was so prized by her circle has subsequently fueled the fake pregnancy rumors, suggesting a madonna/whore-like celebrity pregnancy binary. Long disappearances during pregnancy make a woman look like she is hiding something, but by being hyper-visible, as Quinn was, pregnant people are left open to the accusation that their activeness itself is proof of guilt.

If a celeb fails the test of pre- and postpartum body maintenance, she may be gawked at and mocked, but might ultimately be forgiven and perhaps patronizingly celebrated for being “real.” If she succeeds and manages to discipline her body to the exacting standards of “bouncing back,” she faces scrutiny over whether she was pregnant at all—scrutiny that is a perverse acknowledgement of her success at keeping her figure. Take Kim Kardashian, whose weight gain before the birth of her first child drew scorn. After it was rumored that she faked her second pregnancy, she admitted to delight in the speculation, which offered proof that she had been “so skinny.”

Quinn, however, has described the theorizing about her pregnancy as being painful. And she’s offered her counter-evidence: The show had fudged timelines, as many reality series do, she said, and a scene which purported to show her doing a headstand with a yoga instructor shortly after her son’s birth had actually been filmed while she was still pregnant. Her doctor seemed to acknowledge having delivered her child, and a Selling Sunset cast mate told the press she’d seen Quinn’s C-section scar.

Some significant portion of the appeal of fake pregnancy theories is rooted in understandable insecurity, insecurity that celebrities themselves help foster. Quinn’s public account of her postpartum experience certainly offers plenty of fuel for women inclined towards beating themselves up over perceived bodily failures. She announced that she’d resumed working within days of giving birth, and was having sex with her husband again just a month later. “It’s totally OK to admit to having a surrogate but don’t set unrealistic expectations for [postpartum] moms when you didn’t even carry the baby yourself,” one of Quinn’s accusers wrote to her on Instagram. “It’s deceitful and a shame.”

Who watches the bump watchers?

The particulars of any specific fake pregnancy debate are nowhere near as significant as what it means to debate public pregnancies in the first place. “As we judge and regulate the bodies of pregnant celebrities,” wrote legal scholar Renee Cramer, “we are simultaneously accepting and internalizing the very same regulations of ourselves.” This internalized harm may even transcend the more private pains of insecurity, self-loathing, disordered eating, and enter the political world. In her book Pregnant with the Stars: Watching and Wanting the Celebrity Baby Bump, Cramer points out that fascination with celebrity pregnancies has ramped up in near tandem with attacks on abortion rights. Both invasive bump patrolling and anti-abortion campaigns take pregnant people’s bodies to be public property deserving of tight surveillance, with the former perhaps subtly easing the path for the latter.

And of course, the contemporary highly-scrutinized pregnancy also offers many opportunities to sell things—including shapewear, workout regimens, diets, and self-help books. Pregnancy came out of confinement and entered directly into the marketplace. Until we locate a middle ground, somewhere between stigmatized invisibility and commodified surveillance, there will be more bump watching, shame, and accusations levied. At celebrities, yes, but also at the rest of us.