I'm Pregnant. April Fools!

Despite all the sterile sex ed classes, 99 cent condom sales, and STD pamphlets that force my generation to think about our sexuality, no one is thinking about teen pregnancy. It is still a purse-your-lips-and-avert-your-eyes taboo, which sends us the message that we should think about sex, have it if we're safe, and shut up if we make a mistake.

Well, I figured it was time teen pregnancy came out of the closet.

So I tried a little social experiment. I took on the identity of that infamous minority group: the pregnant West Vancouver teenager. Of course I did it the easily reversible way. I stuffed fleece under my sweatshirt and went out.


The Mall

Sifting through a bathing suit rack at Park Royal, I find myself tempted to sweetly inquire whether they have any sizes other than "small" and "even smaller" to accommodate my bulging belly.

I think better of it, however, when I glance at the store clerk's face staring back at me, and realize that she either just swallowed a frog, or thinks that I did - and that it expanded in my lower abdomen.

This is one of two occasions when I've strapped on my home made pregnancy suit and set off to the mall with a friend, ensuring that I looked young enough to be identified as a teenage-mother-to-be. I am a high school senior, and accentuate this by wearing my grad 2003 sweatpants and big hoop earrings.

Reactions from my fellow mall-goers range from a sympathetic smile and a delicate, "Do you know if you are having a boy or a girl?" in Baby Gap, to a disgusted grunt from an elderly man. The ensuing stare makes it clear that he feels I am contaminating the area around him. Most reactions are a bit milder, as if I am walking around with an eye-catching, rare form of skin disease.


In all fairness, many people appear to be making an overt effort to smooth over an embarrassing situation: as if I have forgotten to wear clothes, but they are too polite to tell me. They glance at my face, down at my stomach, and then back to my face, only to quickly avert their eyes.

Faced with their situation, I would probably react in the same way: Denial is so much easier than social awkwardness. However, after enduring too many of these "I don't want to make you feel worse than you already do" looks, I feel like slapping on a shirt that reads, "Although it may seem like I have ruined my future, I really enjoy toting this fetus around."


After confiding in several store clerks that I am not actually pregnant, I find out that teen moms are a rare occurrence at the mall, to say the least. I quickly realize that if I were actually pregnant, the prospect of all those stares and comments would cause me to hibernate in my home until my water broke; basically, committing social suicide for nine months.

I leave the mall with the impression that I should feel ashamed of myself.


The Party

I walk into the teen party scene, and . . . nothing. For a fleeting second I fear my bulging belly is not obvious enough to be given a second glance, but upon looking down and finding my feet obscured from vision, I decide otherwise.


Perhaps third trimester teenage mothers-to-be regularly hang out with this crowd on Saturday nights.


Wrong again. I realize that my current state simply personifies "off the market." I overtly ask for a non-alcoholic beverage to drink, play foosball, and engage in some conversation with the girls at the party. But honestly, the girlwithakid phobia in the room smells worse than my future baby's diaper pail. It becomes clear that I will have to initiate the conversation with the opposite sex. At least once they get a load of my, um, load.


I must give these scared teenage guys some credit. The ones I talk to are anything but dismissive or rude. And none of them lets on about the confusion he is clearly feeling. I get the impression they think I am fragile, and that saying or doing nothing at all would be safer than running the risk of deflating me.

Later I shed my pregnancy suit and labour to convince people that I'm not pregnant: "No, you're not hallucinating." I finally get some real conversation from the male portion of the room. Most say they felt sorry for the baby, and found it odd that I was choosing to have it, but that they hadn't wanted to offend me by making any comments or asking about the pregnancy.


Personally, I found that the way the public regarded me as a pregnant teenager would quickly become insufferable in real life. Yet, if I were faced with this situation, I'd head to a house party with a group of people my own age much faster than I would into the scrutinizing public eye. I think this is in part because my generation, like most generations, is more open minded than the last; we all know in the back of our minds, that with one slip, we could be that girl in the mall getting the bad looks.


Final conclusions: While boys and girls my age sympathized with me, relieved to not be in my position, members of the older generation appeared simply relieved to not be my parents.

Dominique Zipper grew up in North Vancouver and now attends McGill University, where she is studying English. A version of this piece appeared in Merge magazine, published by Collingwood School.