Who Owns a Woman’s Body Pt 2 – Pregnancy

photo credit: Daquella manera

If you haven’t yet, read Part 1 first.

One of the near universal annoyances of pregnancy is the random stranger who comes up to touch your stomach. To my experience, there is only one other time when touching another person’s body is “acceptable”, and that’s when the random guy grabs your ass as a “compliment.”

It’s eerie how similar the two really are, because despite the objections of “I meant no harm” and the semi-social acceptance they seem opposite on the outside. And yet, underneath, they are both acts of ownership. The guy that grabs your ass does so because it’s assumed that you, being a woman, are available at all times and open to any and all sexual advances that come your way. You are public property, and if you do not accept the ass grab there must be something wrong with you.

Pregnancy is similar. Your body becomes public property. What you eat or don’t eat, what you drink or don’t drink, whether you walk or drive, and even where you live become something to be debated and discussed by strangers daily. The kindest, yet most invasive, is the belly touch. When that person walks up, and places a hand across your stomach, it is a public display of ownership. Your body is no longer your own.

When you are pregnant, everything is a risk too great. Even if there is less than 1 percent change that your baby could get a hangnail, you will be told “why would you take any chance at all?”. Told, not asked, because no answer you give will ever be the right one. And if you take that risk based, the unsaid (and sometimes said) is that you are a bad mother. A risky mother. One who needs to be further controlled.

You are not capable of making decisions about your body on your own. Every choice you make is scrutinized and judged. Despite being a fully grown woman who can presumably care for herself, strangers will questio0n whether you understand what could happen from your basic, day to day, choices. By carrying a child, you are seen as child-like, unable to think for yourself.

One would think how, if you feel I am too dumb to understand which cheese is safe for me to eat without no less than 5 strangers between the cheese shelf and the cashier telling me, could I be capable of being a mother at all. The realty is, that once the baby is born women still face the constant drumbeat of “why would you take any chance at all?”

Tags: a woman's body, pregnany, women

Summer is a freelance writer and mother of 3, searching for herself amongst the Legos and blocks. After moving a couple hundred miles away from home, and fighting a few dragons, she's figuring out that she needs to be her own biggest fan to get through the world.


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