Celebrity miscarriage listicles: the help and heartache of mothers talking about pregnancy loss

The ways in which celebrities speak about their experiences of pregnancy loss could provide a platform from which women in the audience can make sense of their own loss, and go some way towards helping, not the pain or grief per se, but the shame, silencing, guilt and loneliness that is often said to follow the experience. This article will examine the ways in which pregnancy loss is presented in popular celebrity listicles and, drawing on extant work from the fields of celebrity, gender and health studies, consider the ways in which they can be said to offer comfort and camaraderie to the 1 in 4 women who have experienced, or will go on to experience, a miscarriage. However, while the listicles might be applauded for drawing attention to an experience shared between female celebrities and their audience, these short-form articles routinely present miscarriage as a back story to a successful pregnancy outcome, with little health information or links to available support beyond these first-person accounts.