For some reason I can’t fathom, I have an E! Online! feed on my home page, and I swear to god they cannot go 6 hours without pointing out some C-List celebrity “flaunting her baby bump”.
Both the phrase, and their obsession with celebrity reproduction, make my skin crawl.
(How did we get through millions of years of sexual reproduction without having a cutesy alliterative phrase to describe mammalian gravidity?)
Ever heard “F trophy”? I don’t like that either.
Honestly, those are all that’s available.
If I was a pregnant woman right now, I’d have to make my own maternity clothes, or buy them secondhand, or even improvise, because I don’t like tight-fitting shirts.
ETA: I might not have gone quite as far as they did in the 1940s. Ever seen mail-order catalogues from that era? Their maternity clothes were wrap dresses, designed to “keep your secret” as long as possible, because that’s just how things were done back then.
I hate it.
This is a question I think you need to answer. If baby bump is so offensive, surely you have another term in mind that would work.
Then again, I’ve never gotten this ire people have for mere words.
It used to be called “showing”, as in “oh, you’re starting to show!”. If it was necessary to be anatomical, it was referred to as a “tummy” or (bordering on vulgar) “belly”.