Why do celebrities cover their babies’ faces? Exploring the true motive behind this practice with examples from Michelle Keegan to Justin Bieber

When I experienced the joy of bringing my two children into the world, I felt engulfed by feelings of maternal love, intense protectiveness, and the admiration and wonder that arise from being in the presence of sheer beauty.

My first child was undeniably beautiful, with her luscious pink lips, a flawless round face, a head devoid of hair, and large indifferent blue eyes.

In contrast, my second child, born two years later, had a face that may not have been conventionally attractive. He did not possess conventional good looks: a sparse patch of oily dark hair encircled a scrunched-up, askew face. Shortly after birth, he managed to scratch his cheek leaving a prominent mark and appeared to have a reddish nose comparable to that of a habitual drinker.

But did I care? Did I heck. I flooded the airwaves with endless photos of both newborns, my husband and I holding our babies while beaming proudly but sweatily at the camera. It never occurred to me to ‘protect’ their digital anonymity. They were babies and even the most doting of mothers knows that all babies look the same. What is there to protect?

Yet nowadays, the trend is not to share the honest joy of a newborn’s little face, but to coyly cover them up. While generations past announced a birth with an immediate mum-and-babe-doing-well happy snap, often from the hospital bed, today’s new parents offer a carefully cropped and filtered artwork of a baby’s foot or tiny weeny finger or meaningless lock of hair, all captioned with smug phrases such as: ‘When two become three’ or: ‘A little more magic has entered the world…’ How to respond except: ‘Yuck’?

Take the latest such announcement, which came from actress Michelle Keegan and reality TV star Mark Wright.

Gazing at the sepia-touched black and white photo they posted this week to accompany the birth of their first child, daughter Palma, I found it hard to work out what I was looking at. A tangle of hands – big, medium, tiny – and some folds of white crocheted wool? No, hang on, it’s a gilet and a bonnet, showing us the back of a baby’s head and shoulder.

But no face. Indeed, the picture is cropped specifically to cut out the face – rendering the whole thing pointless. There is nothing to coo over, nothing to provoke emotion. For a newborn picture isn’t about celebrating the achievement of giving birth, or it’s not only that.

It’s about seeing the new baby’s lovely face. A simple, unifying, human act – not an opportunity to play around with filters and curate the Instagram feed.

It’s a trend that has been thoroughly embraced, alas, in some quarters of the Royal Family. One of the first pictures of Archie Sussex showed us Harry and Meghan, Prince Philip and the Queen, and maternal grandmother Doria Ragland all gazing tenderly at a… blob wrapped in a blanket, not showing even a hint of a Saxe-Coburg chin or a Markle freckle.

Forget it, peasants, the photo seemed to say: we can coo and dote at the little prince, but you’re not important enough to share in it. We weren’t granted a picture of the couple’s daughter Lilibet, either, until her first Christmas in 2021, six months after her birth.

In days gone past, of course, royalty would follow the announcement of a baby’s birth with a proud official picture. There are lots of King Charles as a little baby – gazing frankly at the camera from his crib with Queen Elizabeth staring lovingly down at him; held up on his mother’s knee so we can see him all the better; clutching at the pearls on her necklace. Contrast that with the infuriatingly smug picture issued by Princess Beatrice and husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi earlier this year of ‘tiny and absolutely perfect’ second daughter, Athena Elizabeth Rose.

At first sight, it looks like they’ve mistakenly released the wrong photo, but no – the wee thing’s arm is artfully draped across her face on purpose. To deliberately obscure it, so that… what? We don’t recognise her if we bump into her in the street? But if she’s so perfect, wouldn’t it be nice to see her while she’s still a newborn?

The fact is, hiding your baby’s face is the latest means of celebrity virtue signalling. It says: I won’t over-share like you. My child won’t be plastered over my socials like a Mumfluencer prop, because I’m better than that.

Privacy, you see, is the new status symbol. In an era of over-sharing, it’s the latest way to separate the plebs from the celebs.

But when it comes to a baby, how silly such an attitude seems. No one recognises a baby, not five minutes after looking at a picture of it! Isn’t it far more authentic – a word beloved of celebrities – to post that happy snap of knackered mum and pucker-faced baby for us all to genuinely admire and enjoy?

Some celebrities go even further than the finger or toe or back of head pic, posting birth announcement photos that feature their own faces – perfectly made-up, not a hair out of place – while hiding their baby’s. This strikes me as downright narcissistic – and even more pointless. It’s using the baby for ‘likes’ and attention, a cynical ploy at surely the most uncynical moment of your life.

Of course, sometimes the baby’s face is obscured because the exclusive rights to its first photo shoot have already been sold to a glossy celebrity magazine, and that really is cynical.

Whatever the reasoning behind Princess Beatrice’s arm-draping, behind musician Ed Sheeran’s sock post after the birth of his baby Lyra Antarctica, behind Justin and Hailey Bieber’s baby foot post of son Jack and the octopus-tangle of hands in little baby Keegan-Wright’s pic, one thing is missing and that is unfiltered joy.

Remember in The Lion King where Rafiki smears gourd juice on Simba’s forehead then holds him high in the air for all to see and roar their approval? It’s just a film – but the deep and primeval elation is infectious and we all share in it. The baby lives! The king and queen have reproduced! The circle of life has triumphed!

When we share our baby pics, goggle-eyed with tiredness and pride, we are holding up our lion cub for that same tribal roar of joy. At that moment, we are not bothered about our brand, of how this photo sits in the chequerboard of posts on our profile, or the cleverness of composition.

If you’ve got time to sit and fiddle with the photo settings to turn it into a little work of art, then you’re missing the point.

The real work of art is there in your arms – and you bring so much happiness to the world when you share it.