Woman of childbearing age Jenny Slate vomits, is therefore pregnant
Good news for female celebrities: You no longer need a pregnancy test (or even an OB-GYN!) to confirm whether you are with child. Twitter—and The New York Post—is here for you.
Two facts about the charming and talented Jenny Slate. First: The comedian and actress is reportedly dating Chris Evans, a.k.a. Captain America himself, with whom she recently co-starred in the upcoming movie Gifted. Second: On Saturday morning, Slate tweeted twice about puking.
These two facts may seem unrelated—they almost certainly are unrelated—but what if they weren’t. Early this morning, noting that several (and I do mean “several”) fans on Twitter had responded to Slate by asking if she might be pregnant, Page Six published a non-story with this headline: “Is Jenny Slate having Chris Evans’ baby?”
In fairness, we don’t know the answer to that question. Is Jenny Slate having Chris Evans’ baby? I mean, it’s possible! She may also have taken up jai alai yesterday, or binge-watched the last season of Mad Men before breakfast this morning. I don’t know her life.
This isn’t the first time that the internet has weighed in on whether Slate, the star of Obvious Child—a romantic comedy that centers around an abortion—could be pregnant. Why do we feel compelled not only to speculate about the contents of a woman’s uterus, but to define her in terms of her latest relationship?
There are a great many pregnancy-unrelated reasons for puking. Off the top of my head:
- Food poisoning
- Flu
- Motion sickness
- Mistook bottle of ipecac for maple syrup and poured it all over pancakes
- Suddenly realized why that empty subway car was empty
- Competed on Fear Factor
- Spent just a little too much time thinking about how women are portrayed in the media
As much as we too would like to imagine what the hypothetical progeny of Marcel the Shell With Shoes On and the Avengers’ own Steve Rogers might look like, please remember that the only surefire sign of pregnancy is a woman telling you that she is pregnant.
Molly Fitzpatrick is senior editor of Fusion’s Pop & Culture section. Her interests include movies about movies, TV shows about TV shows, and movies about TV shows, but not so much TV shows about movies.