Katrina Kaif pregnancy rumours refuse to stop; internet’s obsession with ‘is she due’ reeks of casual sexism

Casual misogyny and the normalisation of sexism in Bollywood seems to be an everyday occurrence, just ask Katrina Kaif. Speculation about her personal life has been ceaseless. Katrina has been a tabloid fixture since she first appeared in the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Boom in 2003. After enduring years of relationship rumours – with everyone from Salman Khan to Ranbir Kapoor – the actor now faces media (not to forget social media) speculation over whether or not she’s pregnant. Also read: Internet’s obsession with who Ileana D’Cruz’s baby daddy is shows just how women are judged on daily basis

Katrina and actor Vicky Kaushal married in December 2021. Following which, her child-free status has been scrutinised every few months. Last year, around her birthday in July, the actor had endured another round of pregnancy rumours after being photographed in a flowy dress that ‘carefully camouflaged her stomach’ during a holiday in Maldives. Comments on her Instagram post around that time included – ‘Is she pregnant?’ or ‘Is she eating too much?’ to ‘Has she let herself go?’ and ‘Looks like a baby bump’. Some on social media had also shared comically zoomed-in photos of Katrina’s presumed, but obviously non-existent, baby bump.

Recently, a new wave of media reports again focused solely on Katrina’s physical appearance, while others claimed she was ‘hiding’ from the media due to her alleged pregnancy. One report also claimed Katrina tried to conceal the news by restricting paparazzi access to her.

What does it say about the media, and society in general, to see famous women’s bodies being picked apart in this way – not to forget the implicit suggestion that as a woman, being pregnant is the ultimate goal. The way famous women are treated by the media reflects a wider culture of sexism. Sadly, the vast majority of women in the spotlight will eventually find themselves the subject of misogynistic headlines.

Be it Alia Bhatt, Dia Mirza, Neha Dhupia, or most recently Ileana D’Cruz, who got pregnant before marriage, or Aishwarya Rai and Kareena Kapoor, who continue to face pregnancy speculation even after their decade-long marriages, the objectification and scrutiny women are put through is absurd. Another example? Bipasha Basu. For years the tabloids regularly sparked rumours that the actor was having a baby. Last year, she and longtime husband Karan Singh Grover did have a daughter, named Devi.

Basically, women are damned if they do get pregnant (‘she got pregnant before marriage’), and damned if they don’t (‘she is getting old’). Katrina and others are proof that one of the pitfalls of being a beloved female celebrity is the accompanying pregnancy rumours, almost always pegged around harsh judgements of their bodies and appearance.

Let’s face it, most people judge women’s looks and figure, albeit sometimes unintentionally, far more harshly than they judge men’s – in conversations around the coffee machine at work, around the dinner table at home or at the pub on a Saturday night. For change to occur, we need more people to wake up and see that sexism is still a barrier for women, even celebrities, and that each of us has a role to play in removing it.