How Meghan's pregnant twerking fuelled a bonkers conspiracy theory

Telegraph

2 days ago

If it was meant to silence the trolls then, well, it has had the opposite effect.
The extraordinary 80-second video of the Duchess of Sussex, posted on Instagram to mark Princess Lilibet's fourth birthday, shows a heavily pregnant Meghan twerking. She is lip-syncing and gyrating to the Baby Mama Dance – a song that became a TikTok trend in which pregnant women showcased their dance moves – with a couple of clumsy cameos from Prince Harry.
The video, shot in a hospital room, has been seen by some as a response to the absurd conspiracy theory that has swirled online since the birth of Archie in 2019: namely, that both Meghan's pregnancies were fake.
'Four years ago today,' reads the caption beneath the video.
Meghan writes: 'Both of our children were a week past their due dates... so when spicy food, all that walking, and acupuncture didn't work – there was only one thing left to do!'
Some commentators – including The Telegraph 's own Camilla Tominey – have weighed in to say that, in labour, dropping it 'down down low' probably isn't the only thing left to do. For most women, in fact, the 40th week of a pregnancy is the point in their lives at which they'd be least likely to countenance such a move.
The video, meanwhile, has only fuelled cruel rumours circulating on X, YouTube and Reddit: that Meghan was never really pregnant.
According to these claims, she wore a 'Moonbump' – a brand of prosthetic baby bump – for photo opportunities, and hired a surrogate to carry her two children, now aged six and four, who are sixth and seventh in line to the throne respectively.
It should go without saying that these theories are both baseless and bonkers. Social media sleuths, however, claim to have analysed the video of Meghan and Harry dancing and taken it as further evidence that she was never pregnant at all.
For instance, they cite the lumpen shape under her black dress as proof of a prosthetic belly. This is easily debunked when I ask a midwife: 'This is likely to be cardiotocography [CTG] equipment, which continuously monitors the baby's heart rate and the mother's contractions,' she says.
'We use it in higher risk labours [ Meghan has spoken about how she has preeclampsia ].' Two sensors are placed on the mother's abdomen and secured round her bump with a strap.
The theories only grow more outlandish. One claims that if Meghan had truly been pregnant, she wouldn't have been wearing a cannula in what they call 'a very weird place.' In reality, the Duchess's cannula, placed halfway up her arm, is standard practice.
Another false claim insists that the Baby Mama Dance didn't become a trend until 2023 or 2024, despite online examples dating back to 2018. 'Unless Harry & Meghan can predict the future, how were they doing a dance in 2021 when it didn't exist as a trend?' one social media user wrote.
Conspiracy theorists have also taken issue with her weight in the clip, suggesting that although her bump is large, the rest of her seems too slim to be pregnant. Meghan recently revealed on her podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, that she 'gained 65lb' (around four stone) in both her pregnancies. It doesn't look like it from the video, say the trolls. But Meghan wouldn't be the first pregnant woman whose weight gain appeared confined to her bump.
There is an even more obvious rebuttal to some of the questions raised about the video, too: that extended labour can send you slightly doolally. It may not occur to most heavily pregnant women to film themselves twerking but, then, who can say they made it through an overdue pregnancy without behaviour that was at least a little out of character?
'I did this exact same thing to the same song,' one X user, Drea Humphrey, posted in Meghan's defence on Thursday. 'When you're that pregnant you don't care about looking bizarre.' Perhaps it seems odder still to have filmed this private moment – but Meghan was apparently partaking in an online trend in which thousands of other women posted similar videos.
Nevertheless, posts peddling these conspiracy theories have racked up tens of thousands of views – in some cases, millions. By posting a video with more 'proof,' Meghan has inadvertently added fuel to the fire.
'Generally, the more you try and refute a conspiracy theory, the more you fuel the idea that there's something to it,' explains Sander van der Linden, prof of social psychology at the University of Cambridge.
'It legitimises it – why would you respond unless it's something credible? There are some exceptions, where people can successfully dismiss conspiracy theories with humour and sarcasm, which is maybe what [Meghan] was attempting to do here.'
Unfortunately, though, all it has done is provide conspiracy theorists with more material to work with. 'In an age where all videos are suspect in terms of being AI-manipulated, it creates an extra cloud of confusion,' van der Linden says.
'It provides lots of material for people to cling onto, saying, 'Look, she's wearing a prosthetic bump,' or suggesting videos are deepfakes.'
For a woman who has spoken candidly about the devastating impact online trolling has had, these rumours must be particularly hard for Meghan to take. Perhaps that's why this isn't the first time she appears to have attempted to debunk them: last month, in an Instagram mood board posted to celebrate her seventh wedding anniversary to Harry, she included an ultrasound photo and a picture of her bare bump.
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A post shared by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (@meghan)
These, too, were extensively analysed, with anonymous users claiming her stomach was too 'shiny' and looked like a prosthetic, and that the ultrasound picture, which did not have a date or name on it, was faked.
These wild theories first emerged online in 2019 in the period before Prince Archie's birth. Photos of Meghan cradling her bump, which were regularly mocked by the tabloid media, sparked the outlandish hypothesis that she was wearing an inflatable belly. Trolls pored over videos of Meghan on official royal duties for any slips, folds or odd movements as proof.
The conspiracy theory initially appeared 'on some obscure social media platform where people were congregating who hated Meghan and then made its way into the mainstream,' says van der Linden.
'There's an element of unfamiliarity here with pregnancies of women of colour in particular – there is less representation in the media and on TV shows and there's no clear benchmark. You see the same with Beyoncé, for example [who was subject to similar trolling]. If there's some uncertainty in terms of what people expect to see, there's more potential for rumour and exploitation.'
The couple continued to break with royal tradition, as Archie was born at the Portland Hospital on Great Portland Street, rather than the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, where Prince Harry, the Prince of Wales, and Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis were all born.
Meghan and Harry initially kept Archie's birth a secret – even from Buckingham Palace officials – and also did away with the time-honoured royal ritual of a photoshoot on the steps of the hospital, prompting the scurrilous online rumour that Meghan hadn't actually given birth at all.
When they did have a photoshoot at Windsor two days after Archie's birth, some went so far as to claim the newborn shots were faked using a hyper-realistic doll, and that Kensington Palace posted a hastily deleted tweet announcing he was born via surrogate. Meghan later revealed that this pregnancy was marked by mental health struggles, making the cruel rumours an especially bitter pill to swallow.
When it comes to wild theories about their family life, the couple's quest for privacy has become a double-edged sword. Carefully curated personal revelations, along with family photos and videos they share, are subjected to intense and feverish scrutiny.
When they uploaded Meghan's twerking video, even if it wasn't meant as a response to the bizarre rumours, the couple must have known social media vigilantes would comb through it for clues.