"To see how ugly you are!"

"Why are you looking at me?" I asked David.

"To see how ugly you are!", he replied.

Now, you're either cheering him on for being so bold to say such a thing to his wife... OR you're totally disgusted at how insensitive his words were.

In order to help you make a better judgement, I should give you some context.

Recently, I met up with a friend who's also expecting her 2nd baby. It was inevitable that some pregnancy stories came up during our time together.

When she was pregnant with her 1st child, she had many older women (urm... they were Chinese / Asian in Australia) tell her that she was definitely expecting a boy. Why? Because they could tell by looking at her face! These women claimed that the facial features of women changed during pregnancy to reflect the gender of the baby they were carrying due to the hormones - i.e. testosterone if a boy, estrogen if a girl.

In other words, if a woman was carrying a girl, she would look... more like a girl / female. If she was carrying a boy, she would look... more like a boy / male.

In my friend's interpretation however, it meant that "If you're carrying a girl, you'd glow & look more beautiful. If it's a boy, you're more manly, which basically means you look uglier!"

Being a Malaysian Chinese who's lived in Australia for most of her life, she didn't take offense at those words as she could understand the cultural context of these women. Her Caucasian friend however, felt so insulted when she was told the same thing! What's acceptable in one culture may not be the case in another!

Well, did my friend have a boy in the end? She did! So did her Caucasian friend. Although they sometimes wished they had girls just to prove the women wrong! :)

So... David certainly hopes that I look ugly... The uglier the better!