Nelly Furtado has a new album, Folklore, and a new baby, daughter Nevis. Her label apparently only viewed the former as good news. According to an interview in Entertainment Weekly (November 21, 2003 issue, "Listen 2 This" supplement):

Last May, before she started to show, Furtado submitted to a marathon photo shoot (14 costume changes in two days), which generated enough images for a year's worth of promotion for her new album, Folklore. While that ploy (the preemptive thinking of DreamWorks, her record label) may have worked to disguise her expanding waistline, there's no covering up her musical growth.

Which invites the question: why was such "preemptive thinking" necessary? Why should a female musician have to hide her pregnancy? It's not like she's an actress playing the role of a non-pregnant woman. That she is not married to the father shouldn't matter considering that male musicians such as Mick Jagger, Steven Tyler and, most prolifically, Screamin' Jay Hawkins (said to have sired at least 57 offspring) have had children out of wedlock. If they were just doing as much work as possible in advance to allow her time off with the new baby, it shouldn't matter what state of pregnancy she was in when the photos were taken

Why not let a woman be a woman and acknowledge that pregnancy is part of womanhood at some point for most of the sex? Maybe all that was really needed was some cool maternity clothes; perhaps Kim Gordon, ultracool bass player, mother and occasional clothing designer can dream up some appropriately kick-ass duds.