The Body and Social Conventions: When it is a social matter

There is nothing new on the way people behave in relation to pregnant women. In this case I refer to strangers, people unknown to us, people we have never spoken to but who for some reason decide they can speak to us about our pregnancy.

Since my bump started to become more obvious, people -mostly women, but few men too- looked at me with cartoon-like eyes, almost so wide open that feels they'll pop out from their wholes. Then, people would ask 'oh, when is it due?'; 'do you know what's gonna be?' (to which I would have wanted to reply: it's none of your business).

Others, would express how they relate to my pregnancy by stating that their daughters had given birth a week ago or so. They would even show me a picture on their mobile phone. Last saturday, due to the snowfall, a lady at the supermarket till told me to watch my step when leaving. Would she have said that if I would have not been pregnant? That lady, actually, added to my stress as I was carrying quite few bags....

Yep, these experiences are rather wide-ranging. I do find these comments awkward. I don't mind them too much. I know is a social convention and people truly don't give a shit.

Yet, my point for writing this here is not to only baffle about the social conventionality of the female pregnancy as socially owned by the community. That, I already knew well in advanced, specially because I come from a society where people are very nosy. My interest is in asking: why is it pregnancy the only (or I may be wrong in this assumption), body experience in which the social feel free to involve itself and thus this practice being widely accepted? When we see someone on a wheelchair, for example, do we ask them 'what happened to you?', 'oh, my son had an accident last week, look at his picture'. Not really, we don't do that.

Thus, what are the limits of the body experience and the involvement of the social with it? Where can I be allowed not to turn around and tell someone, 'not too bad, yourself?' as the usually said salutation? I'm not ungrateful, not at all. The social is basic and important to make us feel part of something, to remind us that we are part of a community one way or another, and not simply ghosts. Although, most of the time we are only ghosts. Is it that pregnancy is such a 'joyful' situation where people have learnt that they can rejoice with others and that those others (sh)(w)ould be glad to share?