Many an article and blog post has been written on the rude and appalling things people say to pregnant women:

“So, how much weight have you gained?” – Grandma Kay… three times

“Now, the babies are Jake’s, right?” – Aunt Dee and a 70+ coworker, Arlene.

“Stand up and let me see how big you’ve gotten!” – Arlene

Me: “Just let me use the restroom real fast and you can take your break.”
Arlene: ::laughing:: “Oh, I”ll bet you have to do that all the time.”

Dad: ::laughingly:: “I didn’t know she had a good side. I just thought she had a fat side.”

Great Aunt: ::complete with hand motions:: “Yeah, she’s really carrying her weight around here.”

… and most recently…

“You look like you’re about to pop.” – two customers and a coworker

You know… like a parade balloon.

There’s something about being pregnant that leads people to assume a woman has no bodily autonomy or modesty and comments that would never be acceptable to say to a person who wasn’t pregnant are suddenly small talk, from weight questions, to jokes about how often you have to pee, to inquiries about parentage. Zetus lapetus, folks, I don’t care how close someone is with a person who has gone through fertility treatments, that does not make it any more acceptable to ask who the father is than it would be to ask anyone who conceived naturally!

Sadly, I don’t know that any of these remarks cover new and unique territory. I’m sure every woman who has ever been pregnant has heard something similar. As infuriating as these comments are, however, I think what I’m most sick of is the excuses for them.

Me: “Grandma Kay has asked how much weight I’ve gained every time I’ve spoken to her.”
Dad: “She just wants to know how big the babies are.”
Me: “That’s a different question.”

You know how you ask how big the babies are? “How big are the babies?”

My dad’s not alone in this defense. I’ve heard similar attempted justifications from my Gramma and Arlene. Even my Gen Xer friend and coworker, Tenley, has told me more than once that my offense to these questions is generational and you know what? I call shenanigans.

I do not buy it, y’all. At no point in history do I believe that women were comfortable hearing these comments about their bodies, from the time it was appropriate to acknowledge a woman’s “condition” during pregnancy forward. Not in the 50s, when Marilyn and her 22″ waist reigned supreme, or the 60s, when Twiggy and Mia Farrow popularized the so-slender-as-to-be-boyish figure; not in the 70s, when Charlie’s Angels fought crime in bikinis and evening gowns, or the 80s when Madonna popularized lingerie as daily attire; not during the Baywatch and Sex and the City era of the 90s or the Abercrombie & Fitch adds that legit sold clothing through nudity in the 00s; not during T-Swift and Miley’s heyday and certainly not now, do I believe that any woman was or is ever comfortable with hearing comments about how large pregnancy has made her, her private bodily functions, or the method in which she got pregnant.

I am a millennial, as is Jake, despite his refusal to admit to it, due to his frustration with the generation as a whole. There are many things that annoy me about those born between 1980 and 1996, too, not the least of which is the tendency to find offense. This, however, is not an oversensitive millennials problem. I am happy to talk about my pregnancy, whether people ask when I’m due or what I’m having or what names I’ve chosen or how I’m feeling or how big are the babies. It doesn’t bother me at all for someone to ask if I’m getting excited or how much time is left. But my own mother told me, more than once, the story of being eight months pregnant with my brother, when my grandpa saw her and exclaimed that she had gotten “soooo big!” and how awful that made her feel. That was in 1984, almost forty years ago. She had an even more horrifying story of being asked when she was due, despite not being pregnant in the mid-90s. It is simply not a new phenomenon that women don’t want to hear negative and invasive comments on their bodies!

Ideally, work should have been the one place I didn’t have this problem, as my field is very progressive and since I’d included the following in my pregnancy announcement email:

“Congratulations, well wishes, and positive comments are always appreciated. Negative/discouraging remarks or stories about pregnancy/motherhood/twins/my body are not.”

After Arlene somehow managed to say something offensive during the three hours I work with her every week, for several weeks in a row, I finally snapped at her when she laughed at me, on the public floor, as I struggled to pick up something I dropped. I understand that she meant nothing by it, that she simply relates and would never deliberately say something hateful… but even my good ol’ boy husband agrees that it’s pretty much a given of social etiquette that you don’t cackle as a pregnant woman struggles to bend over. I spoke to my branch manager and told her, quite bluntly, that if a manager didn’t have a talk with Arlene, I was going to yell at her, that I simply did not have the patience for the discussion, because I didn’t want to listen to her apologize for two hours… and that’s exactly what happened after her supervisor spoke with her. That Saturday night, she texted lengthy apologies, insisting she didn’t even understand what she’d said and that she wished I’d just told her at the time. This only ended when I relayed the incidences and explained that I knew she’d be upset and didn’t have the energy to make her feel better.

Y’all, I genuinely like Arlene. She’s like our library grandma. Still, I simply refuse to accept that age is a valid exception to rules of society that are widely acknowledged by every other generation, in the vast majority of cases. Whether or not someone is over the age of 70, if they go out and spend time with people, multiple times a week, they know that is not okay to comment to other people on their bodies. I just don’t buy that no one has ever shown offense to such remarks, pregnant or otherwise. At best, they just see it as a social norm, because it was when they were growing up and at worst, they think it’s stupid to take offense, so they’ll say these things regardless, secure in the knowledge that they won’t be called out… and those are both terrible reasons to choose to be offensive, which goes for customers, as well.

Customer: “It looks like you’re about ready to pop, Miss Belle.”

I ignored this as a one-off, said nothing, and kept walking. The very next day…

Different Customer: “You look like you’re about ready to pop.”
Me: “I don’t appreciate that comment.”

The very next day, thirty seconds after I finished telling Sarah how much the above infuriated me, another coworker walked in…

Amy: “Belle, you look like you’re about ready to pop.”
Me: ::harshly:: “Do not say that to me. No one on the planet wants to hear about how gigantic they are.”
Amy: ::awkward laughter::
Me: “It’s not funny.”

I’m done, folks. I might only have a few weeks left in this pregnancy, if that, but I’m not going to get any smaller in that time and, from what I hear, I have a lifetime of unwanted comments about my parenting ahead of me, so I am done. If there will forever remain those who are content to make me uncomfortable, I’ll find my own contentment in making them just as uncomfortable, right back. I’ll tell them they’re being offensive, argue the point vehemently if they push, and stare blankly if they try to laugh it off. They are the ones breaking the rules of a civilized society by commenting on private matters. They are the ones who need to get with the times. They can be the ones embarrassed in public.