pregnant celebrity cover girls

Mariah Carey is the latest mum-to-be to adopt the pregnancy pose made famous by Demi Moore back in the '90s. Just weeks away from her due date, the pop star, who's pregnant with twins, admitted to feeling "vulnerable about taking pictures at all right now" but "didn't want to miss this opportunity to document this once-in-a-lifetime experience," she told US magazine Life & Style, whose cover she graces this week. 

 A lot has changed since the advent of the pregnancy pose or 'PP'. The shoots are no longer controversial, and have even been adapted by non-famous future mums hoping to capture their bodies in the uniquely graceful third term state. What hasn't changed much is the pose: one hand cupping breasts, body in profile, head turned toward camera. You know the drill...

 1991: Demi Moore
You always remember your first. When Annie Leibovitz shot Moore for the cover of Vanity Fair's August issue, she created a media uproar. Was this sexual objectification or female empowerment? People debated this issue as long as they possibly could so they could have an excuse to study the glamour shot. These days, the pose is anything but shocking. It's an industry standard.
 1999: Cindy Crawford
Before we launched into a new millennium, the 90s supermodel had one last order of A-list business: get naked pregnant. Seven months into her pregnancy with son Presley, she landed the cover of W standing in classic profile, boob cup pose.
 2006: Britney Spears
Leave it to Britney to up the stakes with a full frontal bump shot on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. At the time she was pregnant with her second child and just months from her very public breakdown.
 2007: Christina Aguilera
When a still married X-tina posed in her third trimester for Marie-Claire, she let a cropped leather jacket solve the perennial problem of covering her boobs and posing like Betty Paige at the same time. "We were planning on starting to try after the tour," Aguilera candidly shared with the magazine. "And so, I had gone off the Pill to prepare my body, because I didn't know how much time it would take. You've heard it takes some time - except with Power Egg and Super Sperm here ... I'm like, Oh, my God, can you believe it just happened?"
 2008: Thomas Beatie
The thing about the pregnant pose is that both arms have a purpose: one directs attention to the belly, the other expresses a fraction of modesty. But when the world's first technically pregnant man posed for People, modesty was tossed out like dirty diapers. "The only thing different about me is that I can't breastfeed my baby. But a lot of mothers don't," Beatie told People magazine, then preparing for second child. Beatie neglected to mention the other thing that set him apart: yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
 2010: Claudia Schiffer
German Vogue put the supermodel on their cover in a pose we've see before. Like most celebrity prego models, she was 7 months along (and showing more than Crawford), and more than willing to prove that a baby bump is the height of fashion. The only person who seemed to need that proof was the man who shot it, Karl Lagerfeld. The designer-cum-photographer had famously said that curvy women aren't attractive. But Schiffer didn't see the irony: "It was important to us to show how beautiful it is to be a woman and that you can have a positive attitude towards your body, including when you're expecting," she said in the issue which also featured her dressed as a pregnant nun.