Academy Award-winning actress Hilary Swank made headlines this week by announcing that she’s pregnant with twins at age 48. Like her fellow starlets who show off washboard abs on magazine covers just six weeks post-partum, this is wonderful news for her, but it’s nothing ordinary women should aspire to.
It took a few decades for the proletariat to recognize the toxicity of celebrity body standards, maintained by a millionaire’s budget of Botox and Restalyne fillers, plastic surgery and non-surgical body contouring, personal trainers, and professional nutritionists. We may be experiencing a massive and equally unhealthy correction in the form of extreme body positivity, which denies the danger of sedentary lifestyles and obesity, but at least we can thank the feminists for turning us away from “heroin chic.”
JUDGE DELAYS ELIZABETH HOLMES’ SENTENCING IN RESPONSE TO BID FOR NEW TRIAL
We don’t need any more People magazine covers mocking mothers who are just trying to make it by with the lie of “Celebrities: they’re just like you!”
But now, unrealistic celebrity fertility standards have taken the place of unrealistic celebrity body standards. The effects will be potentially more disastrous.
It’s wonderful that Swank, with all of the medical specialists and nutritionists her wealth can afford, managed to become pregnant for the first time while pushing 50. But it is dishonest for the media to present this as something “natural,” when in reality it is the product of one woman’s privilege.
For starters, while Swank isn’t obligated to discuss the details with us, it’s most likely this pregnancy is the result of in vitro fertilization and nearly as likely that it came from a donor egg, not one of her own.
“By age 44, the chances of spontaneous pregnancy approach zero,” practicing OB-GYN Jane van Dis told the New York Times in 2019. But even IVF attempts fail at an increasing rate as the age of the aspiring mother increases. In 2016, the CDC reported that IVF attempts with fresh embryos from fresh (not previously frozen, and thus younger and healthier) non-donor eggs resulted in live births in 31% of cycles for women younger than 35, but just 3% for those older than 44. Hence, nearly two-thirds of IVF attempts in women over 44 use donor eggs, and just 22% use non-frozen eggs from the mother, meaning that most women at this advanced age need another woman’s eggs or to have frozen their own eggs years in advance.
What about the pregnancies in those women who have the means to see IVF through and become pregnant? Well, Dr. van Dis told the Times that women aged 40 through 44 have around a 33% chance of a miscarriage as opposed to the 10% to 20% rate for successful pregnancies. In a 2005 study of otherwise healthy pregnant mothers aged 50 or older, 10 in 59 pregnancies ended in first-trimester miscarriages, and nearly a third of the rest of the cases, which resulted in live births, caused pre-eclampsia in the mothers. On top of increased incidences of pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes, the researchers noted that “a significant majority can expect to deliver via caesarian.” Furthermore, first-time mothers aged 40 and older have an increased risk of breast cancer.
And then, what about the babies? Because women are born with all of the eggs they will ever have, egg quality and age significantly affect the prospects of a pregnancy.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Swank also boasted that twins run in her husband’s family. But Swank isn’t having twins because of her husband. The odds of conceiving identical twins are completely random, and an increased likelihood of conceiving fraternal twins comes from the mother’s genetics, not the father’s. Instead, it is more likely that she’s having twins because she underwent IVF, as nearly any mother capable of a first-time pregnancy at her age would.
Pretending that Swank’s pregnancy is somehow empowering for us normal women is every bit as delusional as pretending that Hollywood celebrities staying a sample size after multiple children and wrinkle-free into their retirement years is accessible. The difference is that whereas unrealistic body standards lead to hurt feelings (and at worst, disordered eating), unrealistic fertility standards can cause women to believe they can delay motherhood until it is too late. As the celebration of Swank’s unborn children shows, that is not without consequence.
