There is one particular celebrity #prelfie – or pregnancy selfie – that I especially like. It is of Justin Timberlake, bundled up against the snow, with a glimpse of bluish ice in the background, kissing the beautiful pregnant belly of his wife, Jessica Biel. Her own cold-weather clothing is rolled up, probably quite briefly, for the photograph. The picture was taken on Timberlake’s birthday, January 31, 2015, and shared with the world via Instagram.
“Thank you EVERYONE for the Bday wishes!,” he captioned the photo. “This year, I’m getting the GREATEST GIFT EVER. CAN’T WAIT. #BoyOrGirl #YouNeverKnow #WeDontEvenKnow #WeAreTakingBets”
Celebrity prelfies are suddenly everywhere, and they mostly reveal the sweetest perspective imaginable. Who doesn’t feel a sense of wonder and surprise when they find out they’re pregnant? For an instant celebrities really are just like anyone else, caught up in the biology and emotion of the moment. Certainly Justin Timberlake couldn’t look more unguarded and natural than kissing his wife’s curvy tummy.
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And we share that moment as if they’re extended family. It was hard not to feel Jaime King’s excitement when she posted her own Instagram prelfie, pregnancy announcement, with a cute photo of Taylor Swift looking over Jaime’s shoulder at her pregnant belly peeking out from beneath a cool star-themed red top, the colors nicely faded by a filter.
“And @taylorswift will forever be looking over our new baby,” Jaime wrote. “@kyle_newman – we all love you!!!! Xx”
Maybe it all started long before the selfie craze, with Annie Leibovitz’s 1991 Vanity Fair cover of a naked, pregnant Demi Moore, one hand covering her breasts, the other cupping her belly. It was a brave, bold and controversial statement – although the fact that the most natural thing in the world, a woman’s body, can be controversial is still pretty messed up!
Not much has changed because earlier this year, a commentator in England singled out women who posted breastfeeding selfies on social media as “attention seeking,” and called the pictures, “naked exhibitionism.”
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Mothers all over the world responded by posting photos of themselves nursing, with hashtags like #brelfie and #normalizebreastfeeding and #brelfiesarenatural. Celebrities including Jaime King, Pink, Giselle and Alyssa Milano were ahead of the trend, having already posted their own brelfies. Alyssa had caught a lot of controversy herself when she posted her picture on Instagram in October 2014.
“I got really sad about it,” said Alyssa, “because who are we, that now we get upset as human beings if we see a woman feeding her baby? It’s crazy to me.”
More encouraging is the fact that, after the thousands of brelfies posted by moms everywhere this year, the brelfie has been named one of the parenting trends of 2015.
So perhaps prelfies and brelfies can bring celebrities and the rest of us closer. There’s nothing more amazing than having a baby – and in the age of social media and our love of sharing and supporting each other online as well as face to face, Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel, Jaime King (and everyone else whose name begins with a “J”) are for a moment just like us: thrilled by one of the most life-changing events in their lives.
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