As a senior project, this teenager wore a prostetic belly to as a social experiment. The most interesting part are the things she overheard her peers say as an attempt to make sense of her identity as a “pregnant teen.”
The Herald-Republic reports: “Teenagers tend to live in the shadows of these elements,” [Gaby Rodriguez] says. Before taking off her fake baby belly in front of the entire student body, Gaby told her audience, “Many things were said about me. Many things traveled all the way back to me.” Then, she asked several students and teachers to read statements from 3x5 cards, quotes people actually said about her during the course of her experiment. Her best friend, Saida Cortes, a 17-year-old senior who was sitting in the front row, read card No. 3: “Her attitude is changing, and it might be because of the baby or she was always this annoying and I never realized it.” It grew quiet in the gym as more and more quotes were read aloud. Then Gaby dropped her bomb: “I’m fighting against those stereotypes and rumors because the reality is I’m not pregnant.” I wish this article discussed the effect race had on this issue… Interesting nonetheless!
