There are many things I never thought I would do in my life. Buying a pregnancy belly band is definitely one of them.
To be more accurate, I could never have even imagined that I would buy a pregnancy belly band because not only did I never want or plan to be pregnant, but until a week ago, I didn’t know such things as pregnancy belly bands existed. But like so many things that I’ve learned during the past ten years, my invovlement in a community theater play was the catalyst for this discovery.
In the play Chad and I were recently in, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” I portrayed Chad’s very pregnant (and very bitchy but that’s not necessarily related to being pregnant) sister-in-law Mae. So I knew when I accepted the role that i was going to need to wear a fake pregnancy belly. But I didn’t know that my “pregnancy” belly would actually just be a “fat” belly.
I’m very thankful to the other theatre company that loaned it to us, but my fake fat belly was very challenging to pass off as a covincing pregnancy belly. It wasn’t properly proportioned and it was lumpy and uneven.
(It also didn’t include any fake boobs, which I feel I definitely need to be a healthy looking pregnant woman–perhaps any woman but that’s another issue. Yes, I DID try to create fake boobs but that could be a whole different blog post and was also very challenging. It wasn’t simply a matter of stuffing my bra with socks, although socks and my very ancient, highly padded “Magic Bra” were involved.)
And my fake fat was itchy and annoying and strangled me and was a pain in the ass to put on. Oh how we suffer for our art!
Now, this wasn’t my first time in the playing pregnant rodeo. I proudly played Lilly the mouse’s pregnant mom in “Lilly’s Purple Plast Purse” at Lyric Arts back in 1963 (or something like that). But as Lilly’s unamed mom I was only pregnant on stage for about a minute and there was an in-house actual pregnany belly that I got to wear. (Looking back at the photos, though, I still seem to be lacking in pregnant boobs…it seems to be all about the polka dots, though!)
Anyway, how ever could I make THIS fake belly less lumpy and more secure? Would Spanx work? I made a special trip to Target (yes, I realize a trip to Target is hardly special for me but I was in a time crunch and wasn’t about to go too far afield) to see what I could find, but I was dubious. How would something fit my regular body and my special asset?
As I was mulling it over, revelation struck: THAT’S the whole point of maternity clothes! AND I had a dim memory of accidentally stumbling across maternity undergarments at different times in the past…I would just need to check out the maternity section.
Now where the heck WAS the maternity section in the recently remodeled Friday Target? I was short on time, short on time…I couldn’t wander around Target forever…I would…gasp…HAVE TO TALK TO A SALESPERSON!!!
As a rule (and there are always exceptions), I dread and fear talking to salespeople. That’s why I shop at Target.
And I really did not want to ask anyone, including a Target employee, about maternity clothes. This is NOT a judgement on anyone else’s life path, but for me, presenting the possbility that I was an almost 50-year-old pregnant woman was absurd.
“Oh, get over yourself,” My inner sensible person said. The salesperson is NOT going to be interested enough in you to 1) scrutinize your age and fertility prospects and/or 2) consider why you want the maternity section. You could be looking for a gift.
So I asked, and I found, not only the maternity section but the wonderful inventions of pregnancy belly bands that were intended to hold and support (and smooth?) pregnant bellies, real or fake, of various sizes and circumstances.
I was still too self-conscious to go through the checkout line of Scott, a long-term, regular Target Fridley employee with my pregnant belly band.
Yes, my biggest takeaway from this whole experience may be that I’m a little too familiar with Target Fridley.
Amy Lu's View 
Leave a comment