Friday, October 21, 2005

Who Put The Bump in the...oh, never mind

I have a question: when did pregnant women's bellies become so universally known as their "bumps"? "First shots of Katie Holmes' bump" the tabloids trumpet. “My stand-in has a bump, and my stunt double has a bump,” Jennifer Garner helpfully explains.

When I was carrying my babies, I had nothing so trendy and cool as a bump. It had no name except maybe a belly. But mostly I just felt that it was the same abdomen I always had, except with a (sometimes huge) baby underneath, and everyone else seemed to also.

Does the bump taking on an identity of its own have philsophical implications? And if so, what are they?

1 comment:

misswg said...

I think "bump" was first a British thing, so my guess is that it migrated over here because the press was trying to sound all cool and European. Which, of course, doesn't explain how it started over there, but they're British, so there's often no explanation. ;-)