by Lisa Marie Presley — the single spawm of King Elvis — announced this week she is pregnant with twins.
Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell are expecting twins.
Dennis Quaid’s twins were almost killed by a hospital overdose when they were newborns.
Television news anchor Nancy Grace gave birth to twins.
Brangelina had twins and sold the souls of their babies to People Magazine for $14 million USD. What is going on with these multiple celebrity births? Twins are not a common occurrence. Twins have historically been special and pretty hard to come by in the real world. They were a wonder of nature. That is no longer true. Twins are now the new status symbol for stars.
Celebrities are self-centered and egoistic by definition. They believe they are immortal. They want to live forever. They demand their star never lose its shine. Celebrities are impatient by nature.
What, then, could be a better way to propagate your stardom in a single shot than by having two children instead of just one? You save time and money and career distress by birthing two babies with a single stone.
Twins are extraordinary, so there is a certain amount of foul play involved in forcing multiple births for those that choose to tempt mother nature with medical intervention — usually by using artificial ovaries stimulation with drugs to provoke the body into dropping multiple eggs — and I wonder if straining the body into producing more than one child is the original definition of “child abuse?”
Twins are usually preemies, they suffer from lower birth weight, they are cursed with higher neonatal mortality as well as having to deal with raised incidences of malformations and handicaps. Parents of twins also suffer more frequent and longer last depressive episodes.
With all these risks of birth for twins — why does Hollywood have so many twinings of the stars? There is no such thing as a coincidence, so these baby broods must be intentional.
The answer appears to be simple selfishness and the want for neverending celebrity effervescence and the need to make big news, create longevity in the bloodline and to propagate their DNA beyond the reach of a single offspring.
There is also a certain royal influence to create an “Heir and a Spare” to carry on the fertile family fame: If one Mini-Me is good, then a double-shot of Multiple-Mes must even better!
Instead of applauding these artificially created multiple births by celebrities — we should be pitying their shallowness and hope for the best in the twins that were cheated at birth by their parents from their full and rightful awakening as individuals and not double down bets against the evolution of human nature.
Wow, David!
I wouldn’t have imagined there was actually a medical procedure for making twins. And the article doesn’t seem to suggest it’s advisable. So why are they doing it?
And if the procedure becomes public knowledge, won’t a lot of people who worship these celebrities also choose to do the same? Frightening!
Hi David,
I always thouhgt “twins” are rare, special and envied their luck who had them.
Never thought there would be this “frenzy” to create them artificially.
I am waiting for the day when readymade babies will be available in the vending machine….
Dananjay —
The procedure is dangerous. You’re forcing the body to produce more eggs than necessary — or you’re harvesting eggs and then incubating them in a petri dish for artificial insemination and then implantation.
They do it for the cover the People Magazine and attention and, because, it gives them 2 babies for the physical price of one. They only lose 7 months in their career instead of 14 — they can probably work pregnant for at least two months without ruining their “look.”
Now that Twins are commonplace — how long will it take before we get a plethora of PEOPLE MAGAZINE covers touting Triplets for all the stars?
Katha —
Yes, the whole Twin Thing is precious, commonplace, oddity in Hollywood and it sends a really lousy message to the rest of the world that forcing twins is fine as long as you have the money and star power to provide for them.
I’m sure you’ll be able to mix and match in vending machines soon: An egg from Angelina, one from Lindsay and one from fertile Britney and then buy a plug’o’sperm from Brad or George or Vincent Van Patten to round out your no-fault, nuclear family.
David —
There have also been instances – especially on tv shows – where the pregnancy has been worked into the show so they can continue to star well into their pregnancies.
The Triplets scenario sounds very plausible. This just seems like a celebrity version of keeping-up-with-the-whoevers.
I am ashamed to admit that I am extraordinarily naive here as well. I thought it was just the way things turned out that all of those people had twins and didn’t even consider that they might have turned to science to alter things in their favor.
Hi Gordon —
I try to NOT follow the lives of these vacant celebrities — except to take them to task on http://CelebritySemiotic.com as often as I can — but when you keep hearing about “twin births” over and over and over on every news portal you begin to see a pattern of precocious preciousness out there in the Land of LA and, knowing how they all live to beat their neighbor and compete in each and every way, the Designer Twin Babies Freak Phenomenon was much too delicious to ignore.
Perk your ears in the direction of the entertainment news when it comes to reporting multiple births from now on and you’ll be amazed at how many twins are stewing right now in wombs and petri dishes.
Jane Seymour sort of started the Twins Trend — an older mother giving “miraculous birth” to twins — but now the whole experience has now trickled down to the mainstream wannabee stars wishing to be part of the new twins mythos. One baby is ordinary. Two is Twinful!
Dananjay —
Right, these actresses can’t stand to be out from under the lights, so they’ll work as long as they can and hide their growing bellies: Lucille Ball did it, Phylicia Rashad did it, Debra Messing did it… and on and on and on!
There is a bit of Frankenstein Freakishness to these now ordinary “miracle twin births.” I just hope it becomes in fashion again to have one baby at a time.
Hi David —
When babies are created using science it is extremely expensive and it doesn’t always work. It can cost $25,000 for a shot at a single pregnancy and if it doesn’t work you have to start over and pay all over, too. If you’re on your fourth or fifth try, having two babies instead of one is sort of a bargain.
That’s an excellent point, Anne, and that’s probably why only celebrities are able to spend so much money trying for babies and then getting twins. Each time you try, you keep upping the doses and increasing the risks to get the pregnancy to take…