Performance Art Video

Something that has always fascinated me is the beauty of childbearing. Last summer, I remember seeing a woman at the pool who was enormously pregnant and was wearing a sexy red bikini. However, despite first impression of the subject, I was not repulsed, but mesmorized. This woman, tan and healthy, was perfectly comfortable about the way she looked—in fact, you could tell she felt sexy. And this woman was not much older than me. Sadly, that way that culture today, especially American culture, looks down upon younger pregnancies, especially teenage pregnancies. In fact, even still today, with our advanced methods of birth control and awareness, there are high rates of abortions in the United States. Now, I myself am a pro-choice candidate, yet cannot help but feel that it is somewhat America’s fault at pressuring these girls that being with child is something not acceptable, something freakish. So in my video, I walked around our Syracuse Campus with an enormously pregnant (and completely realistic!) looking belly, and watched in horror as people gawked, squawked and stared at me in disgust, horror and confusion. I walked down to the library, where even a pregnant college student like me had all studious eyes on her, as well as in Starbucks. Even walking past the bus stop I could hear girls whisper, “Oh my God, look at that pregnant girl.” It made me sad to see how American’s make their own people feel ashamed of this beautiful life inside them. In the last part of the segment I walk past the sorority houses, which, if I was indeed pregnant, would most likely never let me join their house if I looked the way I did and if I was going to have a child.