Beyoncé's Disappearing Baby Bump
The year's biggest collaboration news in hip-hop was undoubtedly the announcement that Beyoncé and Jay-Z were expecting their first child. All it took was one calculated cupping of a budding baby bump on Aug. 28 at the MTV Video Music Awards for the Internet to go into overdrive with the news that one of the biggest couples in music was procreating. Yet just weeks later, in October, the Internet was buzzing over the same baby bump, or rather, the seeming lack thereof. When Beyoncé appeared on an Australian talk show, her swollen stomach, whether by trick of light or a fold in her dress, appeared to deflate as she sat down. The scandal was brief but furious. Was Beyoncé faking a pregnancy? Was she wearing a prosthetic bump while paying a surrogate to carry her child? Was she planning on adopting à la Angelina and passing the baby off as her own? Each speculation seemed less likely than the last, but that video, when slowed down, sped up and freeze-framed, really did appear to show a bellyless Beyoncé. After an exasperated denial by B's publicist and the release of some beach photos taken weeks earlier of a bare bump, the Internet conceded: if the camera can add 10 lb., perhaps it can also temporarily camouflage an actual baby.