Julie and I recently finished watching season four of “How I Met Your Mother”. It’s obviously just “Friends” 2.0, but I’ve grown to enjoy it. I like how the show gets very post-modern with plots and time lines. Plus, of course, Neil Patrick Harris is kind of a revelation.

This season both of the female leads, Alyson Hannigan and Cobie Smulders, were pregnant. In the second half of the season, I enjoyed watching the meta-show of “Conceal the Pregnancies”. The show’s producers devised all sorts of creative strategies to hide the actresses’ growing bumps.

You’ve got the clothing options, which the show deployed early on. There’s the big flowy scarf, the loose-fitting shirt and the big dressing gown:

Several variations of the big bag:

The rather unconvincing newspaper:

The cereal box:

Finally, if you’re looking for something really formidable, just have the actor stand behind something solid, like a cooler:

Or, she can carry something and stand behind something:

I posted a photo set of 18 bump-hiding tactics on Flickr.

In what I’d imagine to be a nod to this issue, both actress’s characters make a joke about being pregnant in the final episodes of this season. I’m not sure what the thesis would be, but there’s surely a Women’s Studies essay in the metaphor of hiding these women’s pregnancies. What’s the opposite of ’emasculated’?