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Beyonce's twins: another birther plot nipped in the bud

Annabel Crabb

Finally. Some certainty!

America has been cast of late into a mutinous sea of inconstancy, in which many hitherto straightforward-seeming questions (Is it OK to stop someone with a valid visa from entering the country? Is Australia's Prime Minister called Turnbull or Trunbull?) are – all of a sudden – woozily unsusceptible to broad consensus.

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Having already said she wants more children, Beyonce announces she is pregnant with twins.

No wonder, then, that on Thursday the disoriented American population fell with the hysterical avidity of a starving man stumbling across a Snickers bar upon the news that Beyonce is pregnant. With twins.

And it's not just that Beyonce – America's heroine, a pop star of infinite wattage – has demonstrated the triumph of Madonna-like patience (no, not that Madonna) over reason, conceiving once again with a man who is literally on record with the observation that "Sisters get respect … Bitches get what they deserve. Sisters work hard … Bitches work your nerves. Sisters cook up a meal, play their role with the kids … Bitches in the street with their nose in your biz".

No, it's not just that.

It's that she provided pictures.

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Beyonce announced her pregnancy on Instagram (social media's Switzerland, and a place of peace) with a reassuringly bonkers photograph of herself kneeling, full bellied, in mismatched underwear and with a diaphanous kitchen curtain over her head, in front of one of those floral horse-wreaths they chuck round the neck of whichever quadruped wins the Grand National each year. And she still looks good. It's spectacular.

The main thing about the photo is that is provides sweet, sweet certainty to all. Beyonce is pregnant, with twins, and the twins are living in her tummy just like any normal pregnancy, and no one can feasibly suggest that the superstar is growing them like mung beans in the abdomen of some anonymous surrogate in Gujarat.

Photo gallery
Beyonce's surreal pregnancy photo shoot

Because with Beyonce's first pregnancy, that was an actual problem. There is a continuing and robust conspiracy theory that Beyonce and Jay Z's first child – Blue Ivy, now 5 – was never carried by her mother at all. This theory is built on some much-thumbed footage of Beyonce during a 2011 interview with Molly Meldrum, sitting down in such a way that her tummy squishes weirdly, leading the Daily Mail (and subsequently, many others) to hypothesise that the superstar was in fact wearing a fake belly.

Twenty years ago, who would even have thought of such a thing? And how is it, when not so long ago young American women who were pregnant took epic steps to pretend they weren't, that the sceptical eye now searches mercilessly for the obverse: a young woman who says she's pregnant but actually isn't?

In this new world of alternative facts, believing your eyes is not actually as sure a bet as it once was.

And it must be said, there seems to be some kind of recurrent special problem in United States with issues surrounding human reproduction.

In 2008, when Alaska governor Sarah Palin made her celebrated run for the vice-presidency, cradling newborn son Trig, there began an exuberant – and popular-to-this-day – conspiracy theory that the child was actually her grandson.

Looking back, the whole thing does sound a bit outlandish, but for context we should remember that at the very same time, there was also a corresponding theory that the Democratic candidate for the presidency, one Barack Obama, had actually managed to go one better than Palin and fake his own birth.

Being born in the United States is a compulsory prerequisite for office (this rule seems a little fusty, until you reflect that it's probably all that stands between the world and President Arnold Schwarzenegger). The Obama birther conspiracy relied on the belief that Ann Dunham, giving birth in 1961 to her baby Barack in Kenya, took elaborate steps to pretend that he had been born in Hawaii just in case he fancied a run at the presidency half a century down the track.

The overdeveloped scepticism that lurks in the American populace around reproduction even extends to grandmothers; when Chelsea Clinton announced her first pregnancy back in 2014, there was a spirited attempt among right-wing commentators to argue that the baby was – if not actually a fake, built out of old Vince Foster parts – at the very least a stage-managed pregnancy commissioned by Bill and Hillary from their obedient daughter, in order to strew some restorative and perfectly timed Granny Dust on the candidate.

Obviously, this theory quickly gave way to the more popular one about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election campaign, that she was terminally ill or actually dead, and being portrayed by a series of body doubles.

But seriously, is it time some responsible adult sat America down and told it about the birds and the bees?

That Beyonce seems sensible. Let's get her to do it.

Annabel Crabb is an ABC writer and broadcaster. Twitter: annabelcrabb

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