Today, a spokesperson for Beyonce Knowles has vehemently denied claims that she was wearing a prosthetic baby bump on an Australian TV show as 'stupid, ridiculous and false.' If you haven't seen the clip yet, google Beyonce and take a look. It's all a bit weird really.
There has already been some media speculation over whether or not Beyonce 'enhanced' the size of her baby bump for the purposes of the big reveal - Beyonce was adamant that she would make the announcement herself, so what better way to do it than unbuttoning her sparkly blazer after a brilliant performance at the VMA's and giving her swelling belly a good old rub? Add a wink and a camera pan to a jubilant Jay-Z and BAM! Pregnancy announced. Cue a twitter meltdown and media storm, with journalists being dragged out of pubs and restaurants, off sofas and away from Eastenders, and straight back to the office to write up the story, like, YESTERDAY if possible but NOW will do.
Beyonce's pregnancy was and is, BIG news. Stop press material. At the time, I didn't think that much of it, beyond a few speculative conversations about how attractive a girl-child that looks more like it's daddy than it's mummy would be. Not attractive, was the answer I came up with.
But never once did it cross my mind that Beyonce was either a) not pregnant at all or b) enhancing the size of her bump for the purposes of a great pap shot to tout to the world press the next day. Why didn't I think of either of these two possibilities? Well frankly, because both ideas are too weird to just think them up over nothing.
To come up with conspiracies that far fetched, you need some kind of tangible evidence. Something like this clip, where Beyonce's bump seemingly folds in to itself and moves around under her dress (admittedly it is VERY strange and I cant come up with a plausible explanation - though saying that I am no expert on the firmness of a baby bump). The sort of evidence that certain newspapers all over the world will have been watching out for like hungry gannets, ever since a source was quoted (after the illusive VMA's announcement) as saying:
"She [Beyonce] wanted the announcement to be dramatic, so she made sure she had a [prosthetic] baby bump."
A strange little remark - but OK we could believe it, just about. She wanted to make a show of it, she was maybe not as far along as she had hoped (bump-size-wise) and it made some weird semblance of sense to enhance the bump for the purposes of communicating her pregnancy to the world. If this is true, it would be weird, yes, but not completely out of the realms of possibility.
So, from the official announcement to the interview with Australian TV personality, Molly Meldrum, on the Sunday Night programme, here are the actual facts: Beyonce has been married to Jay Z for three years and has repeatedly stated that she planned on having a baby by the time she was 30. The pregnancy was revealed in August, one month before her 30th birthday. She has announced that the baby will be born in February, which by my maths, makes the date of conception June. So, in effect, Beyonce was one month pregnant when she made the announcement.
Hmmm. A few things spring to mind here. The first is the 'three month rule' (it might be an old wives tale, but with the tragic prevalence of well publicised celebrity miscarriages over 2011 you would think an expecting mother might be more suspicious) and the second is the issue of the VMA's bump. Is a one month bump really going to show like that? And if we are to believe the bump enhancement story, what else has Beyonce deceived us about? Even I found myself going back to pictures taken in September of Beyonce pictured with a little bump in a bikini in Croatia. And suddenly, what once looked very much like the stretched belly of a woman with child, suddenly looked more like a post-burger bloat. It's amazing how a little bit of suspicion can change what you see with your eyes!
The third thing I noted was that it was most probably no coincidence that the announcement came just one month before her 30th birthday and only a few weeks after she had told Piers Morgan during an interview on CNN that:
"I feel great and I feel like 30 is the ideal age [to start a family], because you're mature enough to know who you are and to have your boundaries and your standards, and not be afraid, too polite -- but you're young enough to be a young woman."
But does that coincidence have to be macabre? Can it not just be, that Beyonce wanted a kid by 30, so she's gone and got herself up the duff before she's 30? Oh no! That wouldn't satisfy inquisitive minds - it's far too simple an explanation - no, she must have in some way fabricated the whole pregnancy instead. So here, we'll do the speculating for you, just so you can see how wildly far fetched it all is. Now this is the bit where we step beyond the realms of reasonable possibility...
Perhaps she can't have children and didn't want to tell that to the world, so is pretending in order to not lose face as she turns 30? Perhaps she is adopting a child and preferred not to share that information, so is instead going to strap on a (growing) fake bump every day for the next nine months to fool us all? Or maybe, just maybe (and this is the conspiracy that I would bet my bottom dollar is going to be the favourite across blogs and social networking sites) Beyonce has got a surrogate carrying her real child so that she can save her stomach the stretch marks and never lose the body that was a large part of getting her where she is today... Superstardom.
Imagine that. One small quote and a video clip where at 57 seconds her belly folds and suddenly you have the catalyst for wild speculation and conspiracy theory. And all because we don't like the idea that we're being lied to, by someone who is by no means under any obligation to tell us the truth.
Madness, right?
Or maybe not. The fact remains that in the weird and wonderful world of celebrities, anything can happen. Whatever story you've got, someone else has a stranger one and it's always something that you can't believe anyone would ever be stupid enough to do, ESPECIALLY when they are constantly in the public eye. Stories so wild that they actually insult the regular Joe by trying to pull the wool over his eyes when he is by now (having read years upon years of gossip columns) well versed in the bizarre practices of celebrities. So, when your whole life is cracked open for the world to scrutinise, is it any wonder that you'd do anything in your power to retain control of that one last remaining secret in your life?
Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? The world of media and social gossip seems to have given that concept a complete redesign. Now Beyonce is guilty until she can prove her innocence, in this case her innocence being a REAL nine month pregnancy where the baby grows in her own womb and her belly increases in size at a normal rate, until a small person is produced from between her legs. And short of filming the baby coming out, I'm not sure how exactly she's going to prove that...