The sharing app Whisper has generated some pretty wild content since it was first developed, with people confessing their deepest and darkest secrets under the protection of full anonymity. Now it gives us a peek into the lives of women who fake their pregnancies, and boy, is it disturbing.
It goes without saying, of course, that pretty much anything at all you find from an anonymous source on the Internet or on social media should be taken with an entire spoonful of salt, because there’s no question that fakery and trolling are rampant. But we’ve seen before that people will fake their pregnancies for all kinds of reasons, from malicious to lazy, so there’s a chance that at least one of these pretend pregnancy stories is credible.
If you’re unfamiliar with Whisper, it allows users to upload anonymous confessions and secrets superimposed over images and share them with millions of users. Think PostSecret but updated in real time. It’s sort of the perfect foil to all that image crafting we do on public-facing social media sites, and people have confessed everything from a closeted sexual orientation to, well, faking their pregnancies.
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Why would someone do such a thing? Why would you pretend to be pregnant when the truth is pretty easy to come by (you know, when you don’t give birth nine months later)? Well, the reasons are varied, but mostly people do it to manipulate or get revenge on partners and exes:
There has never been a more apt representation of someone not yet mature enough for marriage. If you’re willing to lie about something this heavy, what else might you be willing to lie about?
Yikes. Here’s another one that exemplifies malicious immaturity. Let’s all be grateful the pregnancy was in fact fake, because the last thing a kid needs is a mother willing to throw anyone under the bus to come out on top.
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Not every fake pregnancy is motivated by a desire to see an ex tarred and feathered or to manipulate someone into getting married, though. Some people will apparently fake their pregnancies to enjoy the “perks” of being pregnant:
What we’re starting to see here is a pretty common thread. What type of person fakes a pregnancy? An extremely selfish one. When you’re pretending to be pregnant to get to the swankier of the two gross airplane bathrooms, you might want to reconsider your priorities.
If you want all the “perks” of being pregnant, you should have to go all in. Maybe barf up everything you swallow for three months and then see if that bathroom stall is truly worth it.
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Finally, there’s one category that’s very sad and almost inspires sympathy for the people in it: the women who are desperate for children but haven’t been successful getting pregnant. Infertility is definitely a very painful thing, but if you reach the point where you’re willing to be deceptive, then that’s a very good sign it’s time to get some sort of help. This isn’t the way:
If you’re considering faking a pregnancy, don’t.
It’s that simple. There’s a huge chance you’ll get caught, but even if you don’t, there’s no going back. You’ll have to hang on to a secret that you will become ashamed of as you get older, and depending on how far you go with it, you could hurt a lot of people along the way. You could hurt a partner who just wants to part ways in peace. You could hurt a partner who really wanted a baby and now has to contend with the pain of your “miscarriage.”
It’s just not OK.
And if none of those reasons are enough to dissuade you, consider the fact that it could always come back to bite you in the butt:
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