Too much information? What's that?

Over the course of a century or so, our culture has evolved from a close-lipped Victorian approach to sharing personal information to the no-holds barred style embodied in the facebook status update.

I know you've seen them:

"Just had some killer Indian food.  Hot as hell.  I'm already belching up flames and I know my guts will be paying for this tomorrow, but it was GOOD."

"Don't you wish your boyfriend was hot like mine?"  (This type is usually posted with photos of said boyfriend, briefly clad.)

"The stick turned blue!  We're pregnant!"

I'm oh-so-glad that the days are gone when women disappeared from society at the fourth month and reappeared six months later, babe in arms.  Not only are pregnant women beautiful, they're human, and forcing them to hide was cultural cruelty.  Still, I think it's a little unseemly when a celebrity invites photographers to focus on her "baby bump" (I really dislike that phrase) while she wears a dress designed specifically for this photo shoot and cradles that bump seductively in her hands.  As I think about it, my discomfort with this has nothing to do with maternity and sexuality.  It has everything to do with using those personal and sacred things to get attention and to make money.  It makes me wonder whether there are female celebrities out there who calculated the value of the media coverage of Beyonce's baby bump and then consciously set out to get some bumps for themselves.

Consider this a plaintive plea to people who assuredly don't care what I think: 

Have some dignity, please.

Comments

[Camille Minichino]

Glad to see this, Mary Anna -- I thought I was the only one who shuddered at the trend to emphasize the bare bump! My niece wore the same clothes as usual all through pregnancy --i.e. crop tops and hip huggers!

Am I just too old to appreciate . . .?

[Susan C Shea]

Amen! I'm amazed at what passes for news on Huff Post, AOL's home page, and other mass appeal sites. Even wrote a blog post last year about a story on Huff Post's News site about a celebrity whose only claim to fame seems to be that she IS a celebrity (how does that work?) who was having her breasts redesigned for the third or fourth time. Spare me, please!

[Mysti]

it's such a touch question--if someone is a celebrity, is manipulating facts about their life automatically objectifying, or are they just using a system that treats *them* like objects to their advantage?

I think it's great that people want to share, but I sometimes get annoyed when people behave as if having big boobs or getting pregnant was an *accomplishment*. Raising a healthy child is an accomplishment. Getting pregnant, not so much :)

[Mary Anna]

Hmmm, Mysti...I think I'd draw the line at objectifying myself, just because someone else had already done it. And yes, for most people,getting pregnant isn't much of an accomplishment. However, for those who went through much disappointment and heartbreak in their efforts to conceive a child, I shall happily party alongside them or raise a figurative glass on their facebook pages. (Only Shirley Temples for the prospective mother, though.)

But please, do not expect me to be happy when I see someone trying to use an innocent child-to-be to sell me something.

[Margaret Lucke]

It's not so much the baby bump pictures I mind. Where I draw the line is the trend among moms-to-be of using their ultrasound image as the photo on the Christmas card. I'm happy to wait and admire pictures of the baby after it's born.