stripes

On babies, that is. Baby clothes - and it doesn't matter much where they're from or what baby they're on - can really bring on the baby lust. I've done a fair amount of new baby gift shopping over the last decade or so, for my niece and nephew and for one of my first friends to have a baby a little over a year ago, and I just love buying baby clothes. It didn't really make me want to have a baby when I shopped for my nephew, who was born when I was just 19 years old, but with the newer babies in my life, I'm guaranteed a long bout of baby lust every time I go on a baby clothes shopping spree.

Anyway, I guess I haven't been shopping much lately, because I'm just now thinking to write about this, but Gap's recent holiday classics advertising campaign did me in today when I received their catalog in the mail (they even boast a striped Vespa, which of course does little for the baby lust, but still). I mean, everyone knows how irresistible a bundled-up winter-time baby can be, but who knew babies in stripes could be so adorable? Striped sweaters and pants, little pointy hats with pom-poms at the end...Amanda Peet's baby, in particular, is just too much.

pregnancy on film

When you're trying to conceive, it seems like everything around you is suddenly about being pregnant and having babies. All of a sudden, you notice that almost every movie you watch features at least one pregnant woman. I recently watched Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, an oddly delightful and beautiful 1964 film about a young woman, played by Catherine Deneuve, who gets pregnant by her boyfriend right before he's drafted into military service. And in a much newer film, Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, Peter's wife Alice is pregnant, although we see her only once toward the end of the film. One of my favorite cases of pregnancy on film is another film by Anderson that features a pregnant Cate Blanchett as Jane Winslett-Richardson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Blanchett's pregnant belly is very convincing, of course, because it's real. But there's something about her overall performance, beyond the big belly - the attempt to swear less, the long braid, the tan and yellow outfits - that I find really endearing and evocative of baby lust.