Sunday Rerun: Being a baby about it

I know they are doing marvelous things in the field of human procreation these days, just as I know that many marvelous humans do their procreation in a field.  You want to get a room back there?

Again, I know that science has made great strides, but the fact remains that every single person on the face of Earth has, or had, a mother. So did all the married people.

You can't deny it, whoever and wherever you are; you had sets of atoms from two humans who might or might not have even known each other, getting together and getting all fertilized and so forth.

So if it follows that every person walking around today was borne by a pregnant woman, why do some people get so bent out of shape over the shape of a pregnant woman?

Latest example comes to us from sunny Augusta, Georgia, where Laura Warren anchors the news on WRDW-TV.  She's expecting a baby, but she didn't expect a nasty voicemail from some random viewer slamming her appearance. 

"Please go to Target and buy some decent maternity clothes so you don't walk around looking like you got a watermelon strapped under your too tight outfits. Target's got a great line of maternity clothes in case you've never heard of such a thing. You're getting to where you're being disgusting on the TV."

Laura's first reaction was shock and hurt feelings, to be slagged by another female in this way.

"Did she just call a pregnant person disgusting? What kind of...I am only at week 20 of this? Am I going to have to deal with this crap another 20 weeks? Should I have my consultant or my boss call her and tell her tailored, form fitting clothes look way better on air than baggy ones, especially when pregnant? Is that a WOMAN who called me?!? Is she a MOTHER?!?!? The freaking nerve," she writes in a blog post titled "Week 20: Sticks and stones.

I recall the same thing happening to a wonderful meteorologist in Philadelphia when she had the audacity to be pregnant with twins. The criticism and clamor for her to do her forecasts from inside a tent or something like it got so insane that she finally spoke out before going off to deliver two sweet bundles of joy.

Ms Warren says that since she shared this blasting voicemail, she has received plenty of encouraging messages from others in her town.

But it makes one wonder about who would say, "Where's the phone? I feel the need to call that woman on the TV and tell her she no longer pleases my finely-honed aesthetic senses and pass along some fashion advice from a woman who thinks TV anchors shop at Target."

I know, it was a woman who made this critical call, and that's horrible. I'm sure people in the public eye get this sort of deranged commentary from both genders.  

I'm just not sure why.