When US news anchor Laura Warren checked her voicemail before going to air, she was hoping for a hot, last-minute tip from a viewer.
Instead the caller berated her, called “disgusting”, told her outfits were too tight across her pregnant belly.
“Please go to Target and buy some decent maternity clothes so you don’t walk around looking like you got a watermelon strapped under your too tight outfits,” the woman said. “Target’s got a great line of maternity clothes in case you’ve never heard of such a thing. You’re getting to where you’re being disgusting on the TV.”
Warren, who is 22 weeks pregnant with her first child, shared a recording of the message via her blog, in which she says she was left rattled by the experience.
Recalling the thoughts that ran through her head in the moments afterwards, the normally “thick-skinned” WRDW-TV journalist wrote, “Does she know this is 2017? WHY DID SHE CALL ME?! And, why can I not stop thinking about this?!”
Noting that women often already feel insecure during pregnancy, the Georgia woman added, “Most days, nothing would please me more than staying in my stretchy maternity yoga pants, not a hint of makeup on my face, a bucket of fried chicken in my lap, watching Gossip Girl reruns, trying to calculate the last day I washed my hair like it’s an advanced Calculus equation.
“But, I picked a career that doesn’t exactly allow for that. There are no ‘ponytail’ days.”
But more than the message itself, what has really upset Warren is that her little boy will be born into a world where such nastiness, such bullying is allowed to flourish.
“Politicians, angry Democrats and Republicans, anonymous keyboard warriors, social media bullies,” she wrote. “How do we teach our kids to be kind when adults all around them can say such cruel things?”
The answer, Warren argued, is to turn the negative energy that comes your way into something positive.
“I’m going to say as many nice things as I can to as many people as I can,” she wrote, “and I’m going to do it in a dress that fits these beautiful new curves with my ‘watermelon’ stomach showing.”
Need support from fellow parents? Andrew Daddo and Holly Wainwright have your back.
Top Comments
I'm going to say I agree I'm not a fan of tight outfits over pregnant bellies. There are so many beautiful ways to 'wear' a pregnant belly and I feel like skin-tight clothes being stretched over them is not one of them. I actually don't feel like Georgia's bump is even big enough to worry about that yet though, and certainly the caller was exceptionally rude about it - I don't think it's necessary to ever give a stranger fashion advice.
I'm 34 weeks pregnant with my second child and was just having a similar conversation with my mum tonight.
For some reason I really don't like the tight, show off the belly look. I find pregnant tummys a bit weird. I feel like I'm looking at a private part of someone's body. I have no idea why I feel like this.
I would never tell another person how to dress, pregnant or not.
I just find the difference in the way people react to pregnancy to be very interesting.