My Pregnant-Looking Body

Not to brag, but I was a MILF before I was a mom.

Photograph of a light-skinned person (from breast to upper thigh) with their right hand resting on their belly and their right hand holding a black bathroom scale. The scale is off. The person is wearing a sleeveless orange shirt and loose blue-gray bottoms. The person has cream painted nails and a few freckles on their arm. The background is an interior wall painted a warm neutral color. Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash.

I’ve been asked 3 different times if I was pregnant when I, in fact, was not.

The first time, I was a mildly chubby 17-year-old cashier at Walmart. A male customer congratulated me, and I asked what he was talking about, and he returned with a question I’d never heard before.