Part I: The Photos of Jennifer Maya Luz Pliego

I’m Not Pregnant, But My Friend Here Is
A lot gets by me, but for the past few years I’ve noticed an unmistakable trend: many of my friends are getting pregnant. They look big and beautiful and shiny and silly, all of which makes me want to take their picture. So far collection consists entirely of women I know well, typically photographed as late in their situation as possible (though I’m thinking I should start of mix it up for variety).

I don’t have a fetish here (really, there’s no Vanity Fair Demi Moore cover stashed under my bed), and my hands have never rubbed a belly (unless they have been specifically invited to do so). I’m not even sure if I want children myself. But I do think women look beautiful, and I get a kick out of taking their photo. And an even bigger kick out of having my photo taken with them. Below are my messy, amateur photos of some great works in progress. In the future, we’ll offer a space for readers to post their own shots and short videos. Until then, this video, 9 months of gestation in 20 seconds, is pretty great. —Larry Smith

Above: A chance meeting of two very pregnant ladies, Jen and Judy, outside of New York City’s delicious Grand Sichuan restaurant. They are looking forward to eating soup doublings for four. You have no idea how happy these dumplings make us all.

My friend Marybeth, in my Lower East Side Apartment in the late ’90s. Salient fact about Marybeth: she has brilliant theory that any food can be improved by either adding bacon or chocolate. If you can think of a food that disproves this theory, email me immediately.

Meet Margaret, mother of one small boy already (named Saul or Jackson or some other such name popular with the kids these days) with this one cooking quickly. She’s a glowing beauty and held up well at our friend Beth’s wedding.

This is Lori, soon to be mother of Carlos. Lori’s Jewish as well as Argentinean, hence she got away with giving her boy such a hip name. He’s got great (if inexplicable) red hair and energy to spare and looks forward to learning about So. California rock in the ’70s from his dad Larry (no relation to me).

I feel terrible, but I can’t quite remember the name of this totally cool woman I met at a wedding in California’s Sierra Foothills (Kate maybe?) even though I slept less than 20 feet from her and her husband on a houseboat a bunch of us shared that weekend and mustered up the courage to ask her for a photo (”See, I have this hobby … it’s not a fetish, really!”) after about five hours of drinking.

Update: Cate with a C and her husband Dean have spawned one Lea Marie Raspberry — good work and good luck!

This is Becca! Becca’s a co-editor of SMITH, one of the greatest women of all time, and now, with husband Charles, mother of Milo (pictured inside belly), who will grow up to be a ladykiller.

Meet Amy Friedman, a women who has known me since the day I was born. Her family and mine go all the way back and she’s like a sister to me. However, unlike my own sisters, I can handle seeing Amy breast feed in front of me.

From the left: me, my fiancee Piper, David Boyer, and about-to-burst Beverly, wife of our famous cartoonist friend. I can a long time without seeing him and Bev, yet always felt connected to them because I was there when they first met at an alternative newspaper convention (I was having a miserable time; they weren’t). They eventually moved to Connecticut and I haven’t seen them in years. I believe they got a boy. I wonder what he’s like?

This is Jill, my younger sister’s best friend. Jill not only had the pleasant surprise of becoming pregnant on her first try (that’s the spirit!), but also finding a camera pointed at her when she arrived at my apartment to have take-out Thai with a few of us the night before Thanksgiving. Jill’s a tiny thing, but at five months pregnant in this photo, is starting to show.

When Piper and I moved to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope, everyone wanted to know, “So when’s the baby coming?” Sometimes it does feel that they hand you a baby and a latte at the door to the Slope. For now, Piper fancies lattes more than babies, and I’m still on the fence. So I practice future fatherhood by borrowing other people’s babies, or just hanging out with the expecting to get a feel for the whole thing. I’m getting a feel for Cheryl at Perch, a cafe with great coffee and an extremely high hot mom (and future mom) quotient. As the father of the basketball in her belly is named Ty, and is a huge golf fan, the obvious name for this child is Tiger—but Cher’s having none of it. A word about Cheryl: she is one of the great women of all-time. She’s smart, sassy, sexy, cooks so damn well it’s wasted or her just-feed-me-Ramen-and-I’m-good (but otherwise worthy) husband. Also, she’s Italian and the only woman in this series I’ve kissed.
Update: The baby is named “Ty.” But not Ty, Jr. You figure that one out.

This is Shoshana Berger, in gorgeous glow at a cafe in San Francisco as she approaches the halfway mark. Shana’s the editor of the excellent DIY craft + culture magazine ReadyMade, which she founded five years ago, pouring the massive amount of life and love she’s got to give into it. It worked: ReadyMade has become the rare indie sensation, with Shana perhaps the most crushed-upon babe in magazineland. SMITH is thrilled to have her as a friend and advisor (and we salute the light within her).

I don’t know Xandra Castleton very well—I’ve met her a few times at the storied S.F. freelancer office space, The Grotto—but she’s instant good vibes. Besides being on nearly the same preggers schedule as Shana (above), it turns out they’re pals (which I didn’t realize until after they had coincidentally been consecutive subjects for the pregnancy series). Xandra’s the co-writer (with husband David Munro) of a new flick currently getting raves on the festival circuit, Full Grown Men. (It of the groovy Web site, so click on the previous link). Bilge Ebiri, friend of SMITH and critic for New York and Nerve calls it, “quite distinct, working with a genuinely different and surprisingly compelling stylistic strategy.” Nice.
Update: After I posted this my wife said, “I went to college with her.” Who knew?

Barbara is very pregnant. Like eight and a half months, this-next-iced-coffee-could-be-her-last-as-a-mother-of-just-one-child pregnant. Barbara lives a few miles away from me in Brooklyn, with her husband Jonathan, who is known as the rabbi painter and is one of the great kibitzers of all time. She has a PhD in American studies, freelances for MTV’s Web site, and says that the most surprising thing about having her first child was that “it didn’t change our daily life as much as we expected” (i.e. they still got out a little and didn’t lose their minds). That child is the delightful Lucy, who’s about to turn three and who as a near-newborn I once watched snooze with the happiest little smile on her face while a New Year’s Eve party raged around her. Little Lucy is about to get company.
Update: b. Nathan Blum!

Lar! That’s the way Lara and I have been greeting each other since we met as freshman in college. Back then, she was a beautiful kook who was into photography, art movies, and Italian, and there was no one I enjoyed drinking what I now know to be nasty hazel nut coffee and probably-still-enjoyable-if I-had-a-pack Muratti cigarettes. Neither of us turned out as pretentious as we could have (that was close), but she’s remained one of my favorite people. Along the way, we each more or less have kept doing what we were doing when we met: I make magazines and she makes pictures, having carved out a super successful photography career. (If you’ve even seen a shot of the Rem Koolhaas-designed Seattle Library, there’s a pretty good chance she took it). One more salient fact about Lara: We once had one date in college and it was one of the best ever: a screening of the re-release of Fantasia, followed by a fancy dinner that our friends for some reason paid for.

What a minute? Does something, or someone, look familiar here? Nope, it’s not that fellow with the fine head of hair, it’s the glowing dark-haired vision in white next to me. Lori has both a special place in my heart as well as in my Beautiful Pregnant Women series: she’s the first repeat customer. Scroll up about 10 woman and you’ll see her baking with Carlos, her red-haired wonder. At lunch today, Lori (who is the editor of the anthology Maybe Baby and creator of the hot site, IndieBride) put me in charge of naming her baby, which I proceeded to turn into a contest on this site. If you read this soon (i.e. late March, 2007) it’s not to late to play. On account of lots of dead Jewish grandparents, she needs a name that begins with S, F, or N. Note: Sadie, Fiona and Narissa need not apply. (I admire how unstressed out she is about talking publicly about names her and her husband are considering; why do people become such freaks of secrecy around this issue?) If you name her kid, you not only get to be the chick’s honorary godparent, but you’ll win a first-edition SMITH Magazine baby tee. Not too shabby, huh?


I had been planning on getting together with my friends Brian and Sarah for weeks. I couched my dinner invite as a general “welcome to the neighborhood” gesture. But who was kidding who? They knew what I wanted. Despite a couple of failed attempts, two weeks before Sarah’s due date I arrived at their place packing cinnamon raison bagels and a Canon. This shot was taken in their living room around 11am. What you can’t quite see is that the painting behind us depicts a a woman and her baby, done by Sarah’s grandmother. My late grandmother also painted, in a style not unlike Sarah’s gram. So the photo had a little extra meaning and brings up all sorts of memories about the brassy lady everyone called Bubbie (”I’m the Bubbie!” she would bellow). Sarah is the following: super smart, supremely sweet, superbly Southern–and the best move my old buddy Brian ever made.
Update! William Emmett Dawson, b. 5/2/07


Could Suzanne glow more? She could not. I met Suzanne, a writer, teacher, and yogi, a few years after I moved to New York. I has been in the city just long enough to do my best to stop making friends. You know that feeling? You want to have bandwidth to let new people into your lives—isn’t that a big part of the point?—but you feel like you just don’t have it. No room. Yet there was nothing to be done. I had too much fun talking to her, hovering over bottles of bourbon at friends’ parties, and learning, with her considerable help and patience, how to do yoga. She became a true friend one of the founding members of my spiritual advisory board (everyone needs one; trust me). She is, in this photo six weeks before her due date and in the life that came before and will follow this baby, the essence of light.

Sari Wilson really wants this baby to come on out and give the world the high-5 sign. Josh Neufeld, her husband, and amazing creator of our webcomic, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, does too. I’m reasonably sure he’s more nervous than his wife. I got this gem of a photo at their home in Brooklyn, seemingly hours before the big moment. But due to some misinformation, they learned the due date is actually a week later. Sari’s a Brooklyn born and bred writer and editor and the kind of woman who walks into a room and immediately fills it with life. She’s ready to add more life to the world. Make that: more than ready. They don’t yet know the sex, but are open to name ideas. Don’t be shy.

Meet Andie Grace. Alias ActionGrl. Alias AG. Born in St. Louis. Living in San Francisco. Partner: a great man who answers to the name Thumper, who took this shot in the deep night of the Nevada Desert on his lady’s birthday. I’ve watched Andie, often from afar, as she’s glided through various life stages, tribes, trials, and transformations with more grace and beauty than sometimes even I can bear. Bassist. Filmmaker. Media maven. The girl you wished was living next door. Girl of Action. Mom to Be. Virgo. Her six-word memoir? “Wasn’t born a redhead; fixed that.” Catch her if you can.

Then there’s this: 9 months of pregnancy in 20 seconds.

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Tags: , Amy Friedman. Rebecca Paolotti, Jennifer Pliego, Jennifer Rheingold, Judy Rall, Lori Leibovich, Mary Elizabeth Williams, pickles, pregancy, Shoshana Berger