Latina Teen Feigns Pregnancy To Expose Stereotypes

A Latina in Toppenish, Washington pretended to be pregnant for six months as part of a social experiment to understand what it would be like to be on the receiving end of stereotypes of Latina teen moms. The community is majority Latino.

For months she wore a prosthetic belly and almos no one in the community knew she was faking — until she pulled up her shirt to reveal her fake belly during an assembly. The Associated Press reported:

Only a handful of people, including her mother, boyfriend and principal, were in on the secret. The rest of the community in this Western-themed city, in central Washington’s agricultural Yakima Valley, had no clue.

They were kept in the dark as part of her senior project on stereotyping. The Herald-Republic reported that Rodriguez found that she was treated quite differently when people thought she was pregnant.

Consider a comment read from a notecard during the assembly by her best friend, Saida Cortes, a 17-year-old senior: “Her attitude is changing, and it might be because of the baby or she was always this annoying and I never realized it.”

Rodriguez kept track of statements like this over the course of her 6 1/2 month ruse.

We’ve written before about Latina teenage birth rates, and the AP reports that they stand at 51% of Latina teens will be pregnant before 20. Check out the video report below.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD