A friend, who shall (for a change) remain nameless, sits on my floor complaining of hot flashes and cravings.
"I'm menopausal," she says, with little thought to the phrase or the implication it holds for the millions of women out there in the world.
"I'm serious, dude," she says to a boy who casually walks into the room, "I'm totally menopausal."
When my friend, whom we will call Sara, does not think she will be joining grandmothers on the route to what is essentially the beginning of the end, she thinks she's the exact opposite: pregnant. If I did not know she was joking when she started talking about her upcoming childbearing endeavors, I would call Health Services.
Pregnophobia affects thousands of teenage girls every day - regardless of their level of sexual activity. While some people are probably warranted in worrying about being or becoming pregnant, many fear it for absolutely no apparent reason.
Why? Why on earth would someone who has never had sex in her life fear something as uncommon as becoming pregnant?
One reason: toilets. Well, not just toilets. Pregnophobia dovetails nicely with germophobia, because you never know what someone was doing the moment before they sat on your toilet or that movie theater seat. I remember learning in health one particular statistic: that sperm can live for up to three days outside of the body.
This would scare the living daylights out of any pregnophobe. The possibility of sperm being anywhere from door handles to computer keyboards to TV remotes to toilet seats to washing machines is high in the eyes of anyone suffering pregnophobia, particularly because of the sheer number of sperm capable of being produced in one ... umm ... session. Never mind the mysterious ways that sperm must find its way into your pants: This is a small detail for any pregnophobe.
What is it about pregnancy that young women fear? While this may seem pretty obvious to many, it is in the implications of the fear where the controversy lies. It has happened to so many of us in our dreams: One day, you wake up pregnant. It is never just barely pregnant - you've gotta be at least seven months along. You are forced to drop out of school, your family no doubt rejects you (as does the baby's father), and your life, for all essential purposes, is over.
I am a student, I live in a dorm, I spend lots of time with my friends, I have lots of work to do - a baby does not fit anywhere into this equation or yours either, I am sure.
Now, I read the Nov. 21 Viewpoint about mothers at Tufts, and I understand that many would argue that a baby does not necessarily "end your life" as everyone had presupposed. But those women are strong. They are determined. These are the kinds of people that could probably have leprosy and AIDS and still manage to graduate summa cum laude.
I am certainly not that strong, and neither are most girls scared of becoming pregnant from sitting down in a public bathroom. I know it is possible to have a child and still be successful, but it is so much more difficult and adds so many variables to the equation that it is the kind of problem you just skip over and come back to later, when you have got all the easier stuff out of the way.
On the flip-side of the coin, many women fear pregnancy for cultural reasons. In some societies, not being a virgin could completely destroy a young girl's chance of finding a good husband and living a happy life. The implications of sex in this context are so weighty, so all-important, that it is no wonder many of these girls refuse to even go somewhere alone with a boy for fear of sexual assault.
An Indian friend of mine from high school was berated by her parents for having been seen simply walking with a non-Indian boy. "But we were just talking," she said through her tears. "Can't I talk to people?"
What is this fear at its core? To me, maybe this fear is just a manifestation of our pride in being women. Because we cannot predict the time in our lives when the horrifying nuisance that is menstruation will actually be useful to us, we exert it whenever we can, thus reaffirming our woman-ness and the ever-present gift that is the ability to carry a child. Femininity is essential, and it is what separates us from the boys.
When Sara tells me she is pregnant, despite how improbable that event may be, a little piece of me reaches out to connect with her. To be honest, I am a little sorry to the guys out there who read my column today hoping to find some pretty juicy stuff, but the truth of the matter is that phobias are never funny or intellectualized to the people who suffer from them.
As outrageous and exaggerated as pregnophobia may seem to the sexually over-active girls out there, it is real. You may gallavant around having sex with whomever you please, but at the end of the day, you must realize that you don't just have the freedom as a woman to have sex with whomever you want, but you also have the freedom to not. It is not something you have to do to act on your femininity, and it is not another bandwagon with your name on it.
To the pregnophobes out there: Keep doing your thing. It is better to be safe than sorry.
