

Imagine: You’re meeting your old friend for drinks after years apart. You both graduated college with degrees in finance, but she quickly fell in love with a British actor who soon proposed. After the wedding, he asked that she move back to his home country, since he and his family were still very close. She’s said yes, since being an orphan meant she had no family tying her to America. Now, he’s promoting a movie here in the States, and you’re excited to finally link up again, and can’t wait to hear about her many adventures abroad. When she finally bursts into the entrance of your once-favorite bar, she comes bounding up, gives you a hug, then backs up a few paces. You look down, and she’s rubbing her stomach—excessively. And like any sane person, you immediately assume she’s pregnant.
Yesterday, photos surfaced of Halsey and new boyfriend Evan Peters strolling around Santa Monica, California in which both, turned to face the paparazzi, rubbed her stomach playfully. In everyday human body language, this means someone is having a baby. In celebrity vernacular, this is also commonly understood to mean “baby bump!” Beyoncé employed the gesture to announce her first pregnancy with Blue Ivy, but these days, it’s mostly used by actors on red carpets wanting to attract the flashing lights of photographers. It’s also frequently featured on tabloid covers of Jennifer Aniston, where any similar motion is seen as confirmation she’s finally pregnant (again) with Brad Pitt’s secret love child.
In photos, Halsey and Evan Peters rubbed her stomach a lot. Like, enough to be flagrantly signaling a pregnancy. And it would make sense! Halsey has been publicly enamored with Peters since his time on American Horror Story in 2014, when she would tweet things like: