Topic: Pregnancy
I'm only five months pregnant, but good Christ, I've got a masterpiece of a belly going on. This morning, kissing me goodbye, Ben said "Wow, you're really busting out all over" -- meaning the belly, the boobs, the whole package. (I'll have to have him take a photograph over the weekend. Exhibit B, you know.)
Times have changed, and pregnant women no longer dress in garments made from 20 yards of fabric which resemble oversized tents. I tend to wear maternity clothes that don't leave a whole lot to the imagination concerning the size and extent of my belly. I don't especially want to look like Lucy Ricardo did in 1953, and at my age, a pregnant belly is a bit of a miracle. I'm proud of it. But it seems that pregnancy and breastfeeding make a lot of people uncomfortable.
At the risk of being dooced, there is a high-level executive in the company where I work who seems unable to look at me when I'm pregnant. All that fecundity, I think, makes him uncomfortable -- he a guy who is into decorum, who still wears an impeccable suit to the office every day despite the fact that we switched to a "business casual" dress code years ago. He also didn't appreciate my practice, while pumping milk at work for my son, of simply hanging a photograph of a cow on my locked office door to signal that I was pumping. It seems a lot of people aren't at ease with such things.
There's been a lot of debate going on lately about breastfeeding in public. I do that -- I don't put a blanket over my baby's head or hide in the restroom, either. You would be amazed how few people have ever caught on that I was breastfeeding. If you wear nursing tops, with a bit of practice you can master enough sleight of boob that no one ever knows what you're up to. But some people get plenty shook up if they realize someone is nursing in public.
There are those who would immediately say that these attitudes are based in hostility toward women and objectification of their bodies, but I don't buy that. It's a knee-jerk oversimplification. Probably more like a manifestation of the basic Puritanity of our culture. Americans have a million neuroses about sexuality and reproduction, and I'm afraid this is just another one.
Me, I'm going to continue to flaunt my belly. I won't bare it in public, and I won't expect you to find it sexually attractive unless you are personally the cause of my pregnancy. But I'm not going to put on a burqa either.
Posted by Gretchen
at 8:52 AM PDT
