While in the throes of writing I want twins, KB asked me for editing help with this phrase.
I want to prance around in public and have to ward people away from touching me.
As true to life as that statement is, it’s quite euphemistic; people don’t just want to touch a pregnant woman’s hand or hair or back, there is a certain part that attracts the most attention. Rich, fecund, beetling and pronounced, it is the area bordered by her sides, ribs, and pelvis. You know– the big part, where the baby lives.
Ironically, KB was not comfortable using any of the words that are commonly used to refer to this region. There’s no shortage of them, but we all have our own preferences for which to use and which not to use. Some are more appropriate for everyday speech, while others are more evocative and lend themselves to prose. I quizzed KB and some of the rest of my friends on their favorites– let’s see how they stack up.
1. Belly
“Show off your belly with style.” –Fit Pregnancy magazine
KB: C. Average, Over used but not really negative.
G’Tron: I gave it a A because it’s like vanilla– you just kind of mentally edit it out if there’s a lot of them, but it jumps out at you and surprises you if used right.
Saburo X: D. It’s overused, has too many definitions, and is a favorite of retards… and by definitions, I mean it can be used for inflation, vore, stuffing, etc. It’s catch all. hence why STUFFEDBELLYLOVER favorites my entire gallery.
G’Tron: Most of these have that issue, Saburo. But I’m interested in hearing more pregnancy-specific ones if you know any.
SaburoX: I don’t. that’s why I use flowery language and wax poetically.
KB: Saburo is full of rage
Darien Shields: F (reserving F- for anything worse that might come up…) on the basis that it’s overused even by me. Furthermore in my country it’s not how you’d refer to a pregnant woman’s… bit-where-the-baby lives, and it has connitations of fatness. Still it’s kind of convenient since you yanks don’t seem to understand “bump”. [editor's note: Darien is from a country that laughably thinks it invented English]
Max: Belly gets a B- from me. Concise and innocent, but painfully overused and unthinking.
FINAL GRADE: C. Strong feelings in all directions, and it gets one of each grade.
2. Tummy
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. But if you touch my tummy right now, you can feel it.”
–Emmeline, The Blue Lagoon
KB: D. Childish but not negative, but I wouldn’t say it.
G’Tron: C+, it’s lame in most respects but it works well in dialogue when someone’s being cute.
Saburo X: C. Cute, but juvenile. Equally catch all.
Darien Shields: C+. Cute, but easily mistaken for fatness. Darien is a harsh marker.
Max: Ehhhh… C. Wouldn’t catch me typing it ever. Too cutesy.
FINAL GRADE: C again, though this time it’s a rather universal ‘meh.’
3. Stomach
“It’s all right there! He wants my baby! It’s not even born yet, he – he’s suing me for custody of my stomach!”
–Jackie, Roseanne
KB: B: That’s like all I use, because I can’t bring myself to use any of the other ones.
G’Tron: I give it a D+ because I agree with both Saburo and KB. It’s the wrong word, but it’s very useful for someone where someone is very shy about their… um.. stomach.
Saburo X: F. Babies don’t go in the stomach. food goes in the stomach.
Darien Shields: C-. Functional but dull.
Max: C. Too much of a gastric connotation.
FINAL GRADE: A very low C, despite KB’s relative enthusiasm for this one.
4. Bump
“I finally got some sense knocked into me. And I’ve got the bump to prove it.”
–Simba, The Lion King
KB: D. Cutesy but sounds like you’re separating it from the person– like it’s no longer human.
G’Tron: Bump is my only F. It sounds shy, apologetic, and small.
KB: can’t have anything being small now can we!
G’Tron: Saburo’s right that it sounds European, but that’s why it should only come from the mouths of European characters.
Max: Hey, I rather like small.
G’Tron: Nothing wrong with small. It just seems weird to describe a truly heavily pregnant woman as having a ‘big bump’.
KB: That is one mighty fine chigger bite
G’Tron: And don’t get me started on neologisms like “twin bump”.
Max: Twin bump… Conjures a very unsexy image… I see two bumps, stacked on top of eachother, like a horizontal snowman.
Saburo X: C+. vaguely european. Slightly exotic and fairly underused.
Darien Shields: B+, for cuteness and patriotism. I like it because… Well, in Britain you can’t really mistake it. If I said “She’s got a pretty big bump” or “she’s got a bit of a bump”, unless we were talking about a very small lump on the head, it’d be pretty obvious what I meant. A bump isn’t fatness, it’s always pregnant…ness.
Max: A-. It’s indirect, but I like beating around the bush.
FINAL GRADE: C, again. Every word that one person really likes, another virulently dislikes. Like ‘belly’, this one gets a different grade from each participant.
5. Abdomen
“And you feel the urge to have an 8 pounds screaming larva rip its way out of your lower abdomen?”
–Sally Solomon, 3rd Rock From The Sun
KB: D. Clinical. And I probably use it.
G’Tron: D for me too, it only really works in medical or horror settings when describing something very alien.
KB: Distended abdomen squirming with…
G’Tron: LARVAE!
Saburo X: C. It’s good for medical stuff. But not much else.
Darien Shields: C, like stomach only a teensy bit better. It can be more cute if you’re talking about giant alien wasp girls.
Max: Fff. D+. Works all right paired with the right words, but it’s too cold.
FINAL GRADE: A fairly solid D. We need another character like Q-Bee to come along and give us a reason to like it better.
6. Womb
“God DAMN it! How many times do I have to hear the word ‘womb’ today?”
Sparks, Sealab 2021
KB: D. It sounds alien to me. Plus I’m sick of the puns. WOMB RAIDER IS NO LONGER FUNNY.
G’Tron: I give ‘womb’ a C, it has some cute dirty hippie connotations, but sounds too much like ‘wound’.
Saburo X: B. Good, warm and fuzzy, but overused by me.
Darien Shields: Hmm, only a D+. For some reason it just doesn’t feel good to use most of the time. Aside from anything else, it makes it kind of sound like the organ’s hanging out with no skin on it, which is just icky!
Max: D-. Bizarre to hear. It’s an inside organ. It’s like saying someone who’s stuffed themself silly has a huge intestine.
Saburo X: see, that strikes me a weird. because womb is like…where babies are made.
KB: but no one sees it
Saburo X: true
FINAL GRADE: D, but a high D. It could move up before moving down.
7. Middle
Baby don’t you cry, gonna make a pie, gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.
Baby don’t be blue, gonna make for you, gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle.
Gonna make a pie from heaven above, gonna be filled with strawberry love.
Baby don’t you cry, gonna make a pie, and hold you forever in the middle of my heart.
–Song by Jenna from the film Waitress
KB: B. That’s another ‘Stomach’ for me.
G’Tron: I’ll give it a B too. It’s where a six-year-old thinks her baby brother is.
Saburo X: B. Middle’s really good in that it starts with M, like mom and maternity. Plus, it’s not everywhere you look.
Darien Shields: B-. I have a hard time saying why, but it’s a cute word. I like the phrase… “Abundance of Middle”
Max: A. Very cute, very reserved.
FINAL GRADE: Holy crap, do we have something above a C? Yes! ‘Middle’ gets an unprecedented B+ from our hard-nosed judges.
8. Gut
“Is it my imagination, or is Christine developing a beer gut?”
–Buddy Ryan, Night Court
KB: F. Makes me think of a man.
G’Tron: I’ll give Gut a D+. Way too masculine, but it can be very cute to have a more macho girl bragging about her gut.
Saburo X: Hey wait; when you say A to F, that includes E?
G’Tron: No, no E.
Saburo X: F, then .
Darien Shields: C. It has real connitations of fatness, but it can be good when a girl is complaining about how big her “gut” has gotten.
Max: F. Eugh.
FINAL GRADE: Looks like we hate ‘gut’ as much as we like ‘middle’. It’s an average D+ grade, largely due to Darien’s unexpected face turn in this event.
9. Paunch/Pooch
No quote, and that’s probably a good thing.
KB: F. Pooch is a doggie!
G’Tron: D. It seems to be an (onomatopoeic?) verb that became a noun. You pooch out until you have a big paunch. Or maybe pooch is a cutesy form of ‘paunch’.
Saburo X: C. Sounds more like fat than pregnancy. Are you sure you don’t pooch when you have a paunch?
G’Tron: Could be part of the young person pregnant/fat confusiotomy. “Have you seen Lisa? She’s really starting to pooch out!”
Saburo X: young people suck.
Max: I take offense!
Darien Shields: F. Those sound more like post-pregnancy horrormabobs.
Max: C. Little bit derogatory, I think.
FINAL GRADE: A solid D for disapproval. We don’t like descriptions of pregnant women that make them sound fat– although there doesn’t seem to be as much resistance toward their feeling fat.
10. “The baby”
“Secondhand smoke is bad for the baby, Darling.”
–Milly Thompson, Trigun
KB: Good for the parents… no one else. Parents or people close. (grade unknown… estimated B)
G’Tron: People outside the family use it too. “Boy, that’s a BIG baby!” But I give it a C because it’s too much the habit of seeing the woman as a baby containment unit as opposed to a woman who’s learning to be a mother.
Max: A+. Finally, someone addresses it for a human being!
Saburo X: A. Same reasons as Max. That’s the point!
Darien Shields: C. Feel that you’re running out of proper terms now, though.
FINAL GRADE: Another happy B rating, albeit with some caveats… and with that we’re done.
No word can be all things to all people. You’ll have your own opinions based on your own associations, cultural leanings, and subfetishes. “Paunch” and “Gut” probably sound better to FA maieusiophiles, while others may prefer really metaphorical things like “bay window” or “breadbasket”. We encourage you to rate these words for yourself, and welcome suggestions of your own favorite relevant terminology!
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
For the thing about me not knowing what to use. It’s mostly because I used belly 27 times in the thing so I didn’t want to use it again. At that point anyway. It went through a bit of editing.
And as for “The Baby” I said I don’t think others should use it because it gets into the “Is she or isn’t she” offensive area. I mean not that you want to walk up to a random stranger and say “Hey nice belly!” But there’s not much that’s more embarrassing than saying “How’s the baby to a fat lady.” I know, I saw someone do it to my mom.
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Funny, I would rank “womb” pretty highly for the same reason as SaburoX: it just has that warm maternal vibe that I don’t find in “belly” or “middle.” The only term for a belly that sounds too medical to me is uterus, but I have a feeling that one isn’t too catchy.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
It’s kind of hard to find an attractive word for this sort of thing. Usually I like “womb” for the same reason as everyone else. It gives such a ahppy maternal vibe. However I do use “belly” and “tummy” often as well. “belly” just seems appropriate from certain characters, while “tummy” is just cute, and gives me a maternal vibe (mostly due to cuteness).
October 30th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Very interesting entry.
I’m not actually a writer, so my troubles when deciding which word to use are not too big or serious. My personal thoughts on the list are:
1. Belly: The word I almost exclusively use, yet I don’t really like it, as it reminds me of fatness more than any other thing. I pretty much use it because it’s the most common term used, and kinda sounds normal.
2. Tummy: I actually like this one, but it strikes me as very childish, so I have not used it so far. If I were to write a story, I might have the pregant character use it, but not too often.
3. Stomach: I find it completely unappropiate, for the same reason as Saburo, it’s just wrong. And it doesn’t sound too good either.
4. Bump: I feel rather indifferent to it. I might adopt it, it doesn’t sound bad. I should thank Darien for the cultural note.
5. Abdomen: Not bad. But in my native langauage (it’s the exact same spelling, similar pronunciation) I never grew fond of it. Would just use it for the sake of variety.
6. Womb: I find it appropriate in very specific cases, but I don’t really like it as it refers to a very specific internal organ, which you are not supposed to be seeing. Wouldn’t use it unless I were talking about the internal anatomy of the lady in question.
7. Middle: I find it OK. Grew on me as I found it in pregnancy related stories.
8. Gut: Eww, no. Reminds me of the innard of an animal. Not someting I’d like to use when talking about pregnant woman.
9. Paunch/Pooch: Don’t remember it from anywhere else, and I don’t really like how they sound.
10. “The baby”: Too specific. Most of the time I’m guilty of not thinking of the baby inside, so that’s not a term I’d use, unless it’s really relevant. I think the fathers are the best candidates to use this word; of course it wouldn’t fit to every occasion.
I do have a favorite word in my native tongue: the equivalent of “venter” (I don’t like how it sounds in English, though –despite that both come from the same latin root); it’s fairly well known overe here, it sounds appropriate, and I like it a whole lot better that the other words people commonly use.
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Can’t say I ever gave it too much thought. If I remember correctly, I used ‘stomach’ and ‘womb’ a lot. I guess i’m more technical like that since I like to write sci-fi.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:44 am
Great, now whenever I get around to writing my mai-fic again I’ll be second-guessing every word I use.