Pregnant? No, no that's just my beer belly: Bruni
PARIS (Reuters Life!) - France's first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy denied she was pregnant in an interview published on Thursday and blamed any apparent weight gain on her penchant for the occasional beer.
"I think I will have to stop drinking beer, that's the truth. If I've put on weight, it's only because I have a beer sometimes", the singer and former supermodel, renowned for her slim figure and porcelain skin, told newspaper Metro.
Bruni-Sarkozy married French President Nicolas Sarkozy in February, less than three months after they started dating.
Although Sarkozy tumbled in opinion polls for putting his whirlwind romance on public display shortly after his divorce from his second wife Cecilia, there has been strong public interest in their relationship.
Rumors that Bruni-Sarkozy was pregnant spread in the run-up to their marriage but have since died down. In a spate of interviews for the launch of her third album, however, Bruni-Sarkozy has talked about having children, and said she would love to be expecting.
"If I were pregnant, then I wouldn't smoke", the 40 year-old told Metro, continuing to deny that there was any happy news.
She has taken the opportunity to answer various questions observers had been asking themselves, such as why she often keeps her head bowed on official visits, as she did when she arrived in Israel with her husband last month.
"It is simply because I have light-colored eyes and at such occasions I often have the sun in front of me. So I bow my head, otherwise my eyes will water in front of the whole world's cameras," she said in another interview, with daily Le Parisien.
"And I don't dare to wear sunglasses anymore. But I didn't have that problem in London, because of the climate," she said of a trip to Britain in March which won her effusive praise from the British media.
Bruni also hinted that she was helping the French president polish his heavily accented English through music.
"When I introduce him to things, it's Anglo-Saxon artists. The songs of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and the Beatles are a wonderful way to work your way into a language, like films," she told Metro.
(Editing by Francois Murphy and Paul Casciato)
