I love this month’s cover photo. When Robb, our photographer, first opened the file on the computer, I gasped. Now, keep in mind, a lot of soft-focus, pink-tinted, romanticized photos of lovely pregnant women come through my office. I’m pretty well inured to them. Yep, there’s another perfectly round, perfectly smooth belly. Next. Yep, she looks pretty happy to be pregnant. Next. You’ll never see something like that on the cover of Minnesota Parent.
But this was different. These women look real. Beautiful and real. That, as many of you might remember, is what pregnant bellies look like. Then Robb drops the bomb: “The woman in the middle doesn’t want her belly button to show in the photo. She’s a little self-conscious about it.”
There are a couple of problems with that request: We don’t alter photos that way. And, if we did pull out the airbrushing tool in Photoshop, I wouldn’t like the photo nearly as much. I’d probably say, “Eh. Looks like every other belly shot I’ve ever seen. Let’s go with the taekwondo folks.” (They rock in their own right, by the way. Go look on page 26.)
So I got on the phone with our central cover model. Let’s call her Beautiful Pregnant Lady. BPL and I start trading messages (it’s hard to get people on the phone these days, myself included). About 10 messages into our voicemail-enabled conversation, BPL and I reach an agreement: We can run the photo as is and she will stand in front of the mirror and recite, “I am a beautiful pregnant lady.” Okay, I made up that last part.
Then somebody — let’s call him Cherished Coworker — asks, “Are you really going to run that on the May cover? If you’re serious about attracting more male readers, that’s not the way to go.” I gave him the stink-eye. And an earful about real women. And then I experienced a moment of self-doubt. Not strong enough to pull the cover, of course. But strong enough to prompt me to ask you, readers: Am I wrong? Do you really not want to see a little linea negra and a little outie belly button? No, seriously. I’m asking. Send me an e-mail at tcornell@mnpubs.com. Cherished Coworker and I have a bet.
The kicker: Beautiful Pregnant Lady’s beautiful son was born not a week after we shot this photo. That, folks, is what those bellies are for.
