Be Scared of This Feminist Mommy-to-Be

When you're pregnant, the world starts to act as if it owns your ass.

I am referring to the strangers who touch your belly or comment on how you're "exceptionally big," and basically everyone else who judge pregnant women as if they were cattle grazing at a fence line.

Yesterday was my first experience with the general expectation that Pregnant Women Are Carrying Our Future and Must Therefore Dress Neutrally, if Not Matronly.

I was walking through the park on my way to brunch with a girlfriend when a couple walked past me. The woman crinkled her nose at my t-shirt and shook her head. Yeah, I was wearing a shirt that read "Kiss My Ass" but it always received snickers of amusement when I wore it pre-belly.

I thought I was maybe being paranoid when another woman passed me (this one with a small child) and said out loud, "Kiss my...oh my god."

Now people, "ass" is one of the most banal words you hear on TV these days (and I am not even talking cable channels). And the shirt is a shout-out to one of the most entertaining bands of the late 70s, a band whose outfits were not that different than those worn by circus performers.

But I got dirty looks from folks for the rest of the day, even in the Dufferin Mall where I walked past a woman who was showing off a g-string tan line that would have taken months at a tanning salon to achieve. This is the fashion-morality barometer at the D-Mall and I was dressed inappropriately?

The thing is, a pregnant woman is falsely held as this ideal of virginal innocence (thank you Old Testament) when really all her belly says is, Yep, I had unprotected sex!

It takes neither altruism nor inherent goodness to get knocked up and yet many people seem to regard a pregnant woman as an icon of both (ah, the Madonna complex nails us again).

For the same reason strangers feel free to yell at you for taking your child out into the sun without a hat on, they also feel entitled to let you know that you're a bad-mom-to-be.

Of course, these are the same people that would never interfere in a domestic dispute, one situation where a woman's body may actually require some intervention. Because the judgement placed on mothers is not about a communal concern for women or children; it is about believing that a woman's body is not really her own.

Whether it is a partner, or an unborn child, the masses will generally be willing to hand over a woman's rights to the nearest possible claimant.

As someone who has no intention of anyone owning my body but me (and yeah, my little one has unencumbered billeting and feeding rights) I might have to bust out the Kiss My Ass shirt more often. If anyone asks, I'll let them know I mean it.