Last Wednesday pregnant actress, Olivia Wilde, wrote a Twitter post scolding New York City subway riders because they refused to give up their seats. "NBD, able-bodied riders who won't give up your seat to a GIANT preggo, I'll just stand riiiiight next to your head and pray I go into labor," she tweeted.
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Like most controversial celebrity posts, Wilde's tweet received a lot of backlash with one commenter saying:
While it is true that "pregnancy is not an illness or disability," pregnancy certainly is not a walk in the park.
During my first trimester, I suffered from nausea and dizziness every day! What's worse is that, overnight, I developed a supersonic canine sense of smell. Scents that didn't bother me before, such as perfume, suddenly drove me insane. On these days, I spent the entire train ride covering my nose and subconsciously punching the passenger next to me in the face for unintentionally making my symptoms worse. Even more, buying lunch was no longer determined by what I felt like eating that day because eating turned into rocket science. Almost everything left a nasty after-taste in my mouth, and food I once enjoyed suddenly tasted like rotten fish.
Although these symptoms stopped in my second trimester, contrary to what most online articles say, I didn't experience a "sudden increase in energy." However, what did increase was my urge to urinate. At one point, things were so bad that I seriously considered buying adult diapers because I couldn't go anywhere without using the bathroom, at least six to ten times, back to back.
Now I'm in my third trimester, also known as, the aches and pains phase. Honestly, I don't know what hurts more, my back or my legs. Some days I don't even know how I make it from point A to point B because I feel like my limbs are going to give out at any moment.
So while I don't expect people to give up their seats for me on the train, I can definitely sympathize with Olivia Wilde.
Furthermore, the fact that we even have to debate about whether or not people should give up their seats for pregnant women speaks volumes about the kind of society we have become-- we're self-absorbed. Most of the time people (I included) are too busy looking at their electronic devices, listening to music or sleeping to notice the person next to them. Much less, the giant pregnant lady on the train. Even more, unlike previous societies, we don't have a moral code that we live by. In the past, not giving your seat to someone in need was frowned upon whereas now, it's no big deal.
While this issue is not necessarily a huge deal, I can't help thinking, maybe courtesy isn't contagious after all.
