名人懷孕要不要公之於衆 媒體是否該代替人做決定

News spread quickly through the literary world: Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, winner of a 2008 MacArthur “genius” grant, had given birth to a baby girl. But the growing public attention didn’t focus on the fact of the birth – that was material better left to the *tabloids – but on the manner in which the announcement was given. Adichie, in fact, hadn’t actually announced it at all.

近來，一個消息在文學界傳開了：尼日利亞小說家、2008年麥克阿瑟天才獎獲得者奇麻曼達•阿迪契生了個女孩兒。然而，公衆的關注點並不在她產女的消息上——這種事或許小報才關心——而是她如何公開這個消息。事實上，阿迪契從未真正公開過這個消息。

Instead, she casually let it slip during an interview with the Financial Times’ David Pilling, over a lunch of *jollof rice, curry and steamed greens. As Pilling recounts in an article published late last month, Adichie ordered a non-alcoholic cocktail, offering a simple explanation: “I’m *breastfeeding.”

阿迪契只是在接受《金融時報》記者大衛•帕琳採訪時才輕描淡寫地提到，他們當時正在一起享用辣椒燉魚肉飯、咖喱蒸蔬菜的午餐。在上月末發表的一篇文章中，帕琳描述道，阿迪契點了一杯無酒精的雞尾酒，隨口解釋道：“我正在哺乳期。”

Pilling writes he took a moment to process the *revelation, before inquiring further. This spurred Adichie to explain why she chose to keep quiet. “I just feel like we live in an age when women are supposed to perform pregnancy. We don’t expect fathers to perform fatherhood,” she said. “I wanted it to be as personal as possible.”

帕琳在文章中稱，在進一步詢問前，他花了些時間來消化這句話。這也促使阿迪契說明自己選擇沉默的原因。“我只是覺得，我們生活在一個要求女性將懷孕公開的時代。然而父親們卻不必亮出自己爲人父的身份，”她說到。“我想讓懷孕變得儘可能地私人化。”

The conversation doesn’t go much further, but her words raise the question of what it means to be pregnant today, in our hyper-connected society. Pregnant women have always born the weight of societal expectations – only now, one of those burdens has to do with the *spectacle of pregnancy.

這場對話並沒有進行太久，但是她的話卻讓人想到了一個問題：在如今這個信息高效傳遞的社會中，懷孕究竟意味着什麼？懷孕的女性總是承受着社會的期待——而在今天，這些負擔還和懷孕的公開有關。

It’s hard to hide a growing belly, especially after four to five months or so, but now more than ever, a *fetus’s development has become a public event. Social media serves as a *catalogue for users’ life changes, and if mood swings and wardrobe updates qualify, pregnancy certainly fits the bill. To withhold such information would be treated as a betrayal by the social media audience, which has come to expect a degree of intimacy from the medium.

我們很難藏住一個日漸隆起的腹部，尤其在四五個月後，但現在，胎兒的發育和以往任何時候相比，都成爲了一個更爲公開的事情。社交媒體就像是記錄用戶生活變化的一覽表，如果情緒波動和衣櫃更新都屬於這個範疇，那麼懷孕自然也不例外。對這些信息有所保留，將會被社交媒體的圍觀者們視爲一種背叛。因爲大家都希望能借此增加親密感。

The internet has shifted the very way we speak about pregnancy, just over the last decade and a half. Phrases like “baby *bump” and “bump watch” may be *ubiquitous online and in tabloids nowadays, but they were virtually nonexistent before the start of the new millennium.

在過去的十五年間，互聯網改變了我們談論懷孕的方式。類似於“嬰兒凸”和“孕相觀察”這種詞彙或許在今天的網絡和小報中十分普遍，而事實上，它們在新千年之前還並不存在。

Slate reporter Dvora Meyers traces “baby bump” back to 2002, when the tabloid Us Weekly started to use it to describe the midsections of pregnant celebrities. Jezebel’s Sadie Stein places the origins of “bump watch” not long after, in 2004, as the *paparazzi scanned the stomachs of celebrities for evidence of a developing child.

《Slate》雜誌記者德沃拉•邁耶斯將“嬰兒凸”這一說法追溯至2002年，當時小報《美國週刊》開始用這個詞來形容懷孕名人的上腹部。Jezebel網站的莎蒂•施泰因認爲“孕相觀察”一詞首次出現在不久後的2004年，當時狗仔隊仔細觀察名人們的腹部，並以此作爲懷孕的證據。

With so much emphasis on women’s *midriffs, it’s little wonder that the pregnancy photos online have become a series of headless portraits, the camera laser-focused on the expanding belly in question. This style of photo can seem dehumanizing: The woman stands in profile to give her growing belly maximum effect, but her face is usually cut off at the top of the frame. The fetus is given symbolic importance, not the mother-to-be.

由於人們對女性上腹部如此關注，網上的孕照變成了一系列“無頭肖像”也不足爲奇，相機只關注人們熱議的日益隆起的腹部。這樣的照片似乎是缺乏人性的：女性側身站在鏡頭前，她們隆起的腹部成爲了最搶眼的部分，然而面部卻往往被裁掉。胎兒被賦予了高度的象徵意義，而準媽媽卻被無視了。

Performing pregnancy continues well after the baby is born. An equally modern phenomenon is the concept of the “post-baby body”: New mothers must race to *shed their pregnancy fat after conceiving, to return to their so-called “real” weight. It’s just one more pressure to add to a slate now filled with the day-to-day care of a newborn, and it’s little wonder Adichie wanted no part of it.

懷孕消息公開這件事甚至在嬰兒降生後還在繼續。“孕後身材”也是個現代現象：新媽媽們必須快速地甩掉產後脂肪，回到所謂的“現實”體重。這是除了每天照顧新生兒以外的又一壓力，也難怪阿迪契並不想公開懷孕生產的消息。