Oh lord. I AM fat.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

When this question reared its ugly head at me, I took a poll amongst all my girlfriends, as well as the female patrons of the bar I work at…

And without exception, EVERY SINGLE WOMAN I talked to has been falsely accused of being pregnant. Their size/weight seemed to have no bearing on the likelihood of being asked this question, which is both reassuring and somewhat alarming. I would have assumed a larger woman would have more likelihood of being asked this, and that a stick-thin wafer of a girl like my friend Jen would not. (Jen is actually underweight, at 5’ 10" and 115 lbs. That’s a whole other story.)

But she has heard it, too.

It seems that most of the people who ask this question are women, and half of those women seem to ask it in a slightly snide way.

So they’re just being bitches.

I encourage any woman who has been insulted by this question to take this poll amongst her female acquaintances. The results are comforting.

22

I’ve had a man and a woman ask me if I was pregnant. In both instances, I let out an exaggerated sigh and told them, “No, I’m just fat.”

I walked away from both of them with a huge smirk on face after seeing their faces and necks go blazingly red from embarrassment.

Dipshits.

23

I got asked that once, too, and I wasn’t pregnant. I don’t know which is worse- that, or what I did to someone else once. One of the court reporters that I work with regularly used to be very overweight (she’s since had gastric bypass). I probably see her once a week or so. A few years ago, she was talking about how excited she was that her due date was near and the name she and her husband had picked out- and stupid me said, “I didn’t know you were pregnant!”. :smack:

24

Ask Mrs. Schroedinger.

25

Sort of the ultimate extension of the half-full/half-empty question, I would wager.

26

UGH!
I have had this happen more than once, but now I am so fat, people know I am just fat.
I would actually like to go back to the days when I just had a bit of a belly! :smiley:

…it could be worse.

27

Don’t stop with “Are you pregnant?”
Ask them if they know who the father is. :eek: :smack:

28

I had someone almost ask me this last week. To be fair, I was playing with the woman’s eight-month-old at the time so we were already discussing babies, and I was wearing a button-down shirt open over a camisole. And I’m fat. I saw her almost ask something, give my figure a quick once-over, and then change the question to, “Do you want to have kids?” Well played, ma’am.

I’ve had a couple other people ask me when I was due, or refer to my “condition.” The “in your condition guy” worked at a temp assignment I was doing in 1995 or so, and I was wearing one of those empire-waist babydoll dresses that were popular at the time. They stopped being popular in my closet that very day. I was only a bit overweight then, but everyone looks pregnant in those things.

29

I don’t know if this is any worse, but my friend was this week offered a seat on a packed train by an older woman who thought she was pregnant, so everyone on the train turned round to look at the ‘pregnant lady’.

Yes, she took the seat

30

Not sure about that.
If you were pregnant in that same situation and wearing the same clothes and she’d said it, would you still have thought it was well played or would you have wondered what kind of an insensitive half-baked dodo asks a pregnant woman if she wanted kids?
She knew you weren’t pregnant; because if she thought you were, that would be an enormously weird and peculiar thing to say.

31

Five or six years ago, on a Saturday spring morning, I was at the downtown bus station waiting to go to my volunteer job at a shelter. I was wearing plain jeans and t-shirt.

The guy next to me asked my age, to which I truthfully replied. The guy was surprised and couldn’t believe that was my real age. Then, we more or less exchanged phrases, and during our small talk, the following things were said by him:

“Are you pregnant?” Eh… no, in fact at that time there was no way I could be pregnant except through divine intervention. Keep talking, and I mention I’m from Puerto Rico…

“You have a husband waiting for you there, of course.” Not as a question, but as a fact. Sigh Again, at that point (and now), I’ve never had a husband… not even a boyfriend!

Strange enough, after I answered negatively to both of those statements, he then proceeded to try and see if I would go out with him on a date. WTF???

To this day, that has been the most weird pick up conversation I’ve encountered.

32

“No, I’m not pregnant … it’s a really, really big tapeworm. His name is Eugene.”

33

that’s what I tell them too, I’ve been asked maybe twice

34

That does actually make me feel a bit better, but people still need to keep their stupid mouths shut.

35

That’s the point. The woman realized cbawlmer wasn’t preggo so changed the question that was about to come out into one that fit the situation.

36

I had a garage sale about 18 years ago, and was selling my maternity clothes. A woman came along and looked through the maternity jeans, maternity shirts, and maternity dresses. She chose several items and approached me to pay.

“When are you due?” I asked. She glared at me and said “I’m not pregnant, I just like to wear maternity clothes because they’re comfortable. Do I look pregnant?!”

Actually, she did look pregnant. She was a little bit overweight and was wearing maternity jeans. That was just so weird. How could anyone be offended when they’re overweight, wear maternity clothes, and someone assumes that they’re pregnant?

Oh, well - it was a strange yard sale all around. That was the sale where I sold my husband’s old car, a rock from the garden(?), a few perennials from the same garden, and the shoes that I was wearing. My husband’s car had bit the dust and was leaning rather crookedly in the driveway (flat tire), and some guy asked if I wanted to sell it. Qiuck as a bunny I grabbed the title, asked my husband to sign it, and that thing was out of there. It was great. Another guy came along and wanted a rock in our garden. Why not? He then bought some of my perennials.

My husband said that everytime he looked outside, something weird was happening. First, I ran in and told him that I’d sold his car. Then he looked up and I was digging flowers up in the back yard with some random guy. Then he looked up again and we were rolling the rock into a wagon and trundling it out of the yard. It was a really ugly rock, by the way. Next I came into the house looking for a pair of shoes to wear. “Where are the shoes you had on?” he asked. “I sold them”, I replied.

The thing is, they were those really cheap plastic jelly shoes that were popular at the time, and someone offered me $10 for them. OK…

School let out and all of the neighborhood kids came and bought most of the toys. My husband glanced outside and there were a dozen kids swarming our yard and buying random crap. “My mom will love this!” “Look, a Chia Pet!” “Ooh… jewelry!”

At the end of the day, we had a little bit of clothing, a few books, and a set of TV trays. Everything else was gone. I wish all of our sales were like that.

37

Sorry but this part is just too funny. At 3 months it usually doesn’t show at all (other than for the puking and all that). Your inquisitor must have felt the luckiest person on Earth dodging the bullet by two wrongs making a right.

(!) I hope you held another yard sale the next weekend, because at that rate, you could be a millionaire in no time.

Other than that, yeah, when in doubt, shut up. If you are super sure, shut up. Never ask a woman if she is pregnant if you are not a doctor walking in for a c-section.

38

Heh. Maybe another good joke response would be, “How did you know? I just took the test this morning!”

39

I’ve also had a guy look at my belly scar and ask if I’ve had kids and that was a C-section scar.

Talk about a mood-killer…

40

Yes, exactly. I literally saw her entire thought process on her face, subtle but definite. When she inhaled to ask the question, she thought I was pregnant, but by the time she spoke a second later, she had figured out that wasn’t the case.

The worst is when little kids do it. “Look, that lady has a baby in her tummy!” Nope, sorry, I just have a pot belly and wide hips.