You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

Annette Bening looked great at the Academy Awards. You couldn’t even tell she was due momentarily, until she stood up. I bet she felt confident knowing nobody else would be wearing the same dress, even though it was an Armani. Who would have thought Armani had a maternity line?

When I was growing up, nobody would have thought anyone that pregnant would even be going out, let alone going out in an evening dress. Attitudes were different then. Being pregnant was practically viewed as an embarrassment. As a matter of fact, the Spanish word for pregnant is “embarazada.” I was embarrassed because I was married in June of 1959 and gave birth in May of 1960--close enough to raise a few eyebrows.

Back then, there were four rules that couldn’t be broken:

1) You had to be married to have a baby.

2) You had to keep everything covered when you were pregnant.

3) You had to eat for two.

4) You had to give up your seat to a pregnant woman on a train or bus.

Now what used to be normal is bizarre, and what’s bizarre is normal. Women used to hide their bulging tummies. Today, the bigger the belly, the bigger the smile on mom-and-pop-to-be. Modesty has become an obsolete word, and “What’s cookin’ in the oven” is accented by women who are nine months pregnant wearing Lycra miniskirts.

Back in the “good old days,” they wouldn’t even consider putting a pregnant women on the cover of Ladies Home Journal. Imagine my surprise when I saw Demi Moore, nude and pregnant, on the cover of Vanity Fair. My first husband never saw that much of me in daylight in 20 years of marriage.

When Cindy Crawford was photographed nude and pregnant for the cover of W magazine, I wasn’t shocked. I just looked to see if she had any more moles. She didn’t.

Not so long ago, there was no need for maternity clothes. Women were kept at home, barefoot and pregnant. It was a disgrace to be seen very pregnant in public. Almost as shameful as being unwed and pregnant. Olivia de Havilland won an Oscar for portraying a shamed unwed mother forced to give up her baby in “To Each His Own.” I was 11, and I remember crying my eyes out and learning a lesson.

The first time I was pregnant, in 1959, you couldn’t buy maternity clothes in a maternity store. There weren’t any maternity stores. I had to go to Lane Bryant, the store that used to be for women with figure problems. If you were too tall, too short, too wide or any combination of the three, you could usually find something that fit.

Or I’d look for a rack of one-size-fits-all dresses in a department store. Usually located between the ladies room and a section called “Odds and Ends.” Usually on the 8th floor.

I remember once looking through a Sears Roebuck catalog and finding maternity clothes sandwiched between mailboxes and mattresses.

There were only two kinds of maternity styles back then: “the big dress” and “the cut-out-hole skirt” with a big blouse over it. I wonder if that Versace dress Jennifer Lopez wore to the Grammys could have been a maternity dress. It had a big cut-out front section. Someone should have told her she forgot the blouse.

Whether a maternity outfit was one or two pieces, it usually came with a Peter Pan collar with a large bow at the neckline--so you looked demure and innocent, and could make believe you had never “done it.” Remember the big polka-dot bows on all the maternity clothes Lucy Ricardo wore when she was pregnant on “I Love Lucy.”

All women should be grateful to Lucille Ball. There she was, singing and dancing and being out and about, when women in “that condition” were supposed to be conservative and confined. Maybe Murphy Brown didn’t understand and thought Desi was just the delivery man.

The idea of a pregnant woman being sexy was as remote as a superstar telling the press she was going to have a baby but not going to have a husband. Looking through a maternity catalog with my daughter recently, I thought I was looking through a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

There are some things I don’t understand. For instance, why do some people make such a fuss over mothers nursing in public when there were so many exposed breasts at the Oscars this year?

The idea of someone giving birth at the Academy Awards isn’t so unusual. A lot of women have given birth in taxis for years. I’m sorry Bening didn’t win the best-actress award. They could at least have given her one for showing up most pregnant. But I’m happy her baby didn’t make it to the awards. If it had, I worried she’d have to name it Oscar. The only Oscars I know of are Oscar Levant, Oscar Madison and Oscar Mayer Wiener.

I think I spotted a trend at the Oscars this year. In addition to Annette, Tammy Tiehel, Vanessa Williams and Catherine Zeta-Jones are all expecting. Next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if even Oscar were pregnant. *