What Facial Expressions to Use When You’re Expecting

So Angela and I have been read­ing some dif­fer­ent books on preg­nan­cy. Okay, she’s been doing most of the read­ing so far as she has about five dif­fer­ent books. I bought one, titled Preg­nan­cy Sucks for Men: What to Do When Your Mir­a­cle Makes You BOTH Mis­er­able, which is a fair­ly enter­tain­ing read as well as infor­ma­tive, although I could do with­out some of the patron­iz­ing man-humor. I inter­est­ed in my kid more than the foot­ball game and I don’t need some oth­er guy to tell me in a burly voice that’s the cool thing to do.

Any­way, Ange­la’s night­stand has become a pile of preg­nan­cy relat­ed infor­ma­tion. From her pre­na­tal vit­a­mins to her Fit Preg­nan­cy mag­a­zines, to her stack of preg­nan­cy books, she’s been read­ing a lot late­ly. Of course, when you’re going to have a baby, the de fac­to hand­book is What to Expect When You’re Expect­ing. Every­one reads this book when they’re about to have a baby (It even showed up in an episode of last year’s ill-fat­ed sci-fi show Inva­sion, with the moth­er-to-be Larkin read­ing the book). I think they must pay OB-Gyns to hand it out. How­ev­er, it was­n’t until Angela and I spent some time in the preg­nan­cy sec­tion of our Barnes & Noble that I notice some­thing about the cov­er of this book, as well as the cov­er of the asso­ci­at­ed book (also on Ange­la’s night­stand) What to Expect: Eat­ing Well When You’re Expect­ing:

See the pat­tern? This woman does not seem very hap­py about her child-to-be. What I don’t under­stand is, if you’re draw­ing a mod­el for the cov­er of your book, can’t you draw them any­way you want? Why not draw them hap­py? Would­n’t sell­ing preg­nan­cy has a cause for joy help you sell more books about that subject?

In look­ing some of these up, I came across the Span­ish ver­sion of this book:

I don’t get it. If you speak Span­ish, you’ll be hap­py about being preg­nant? Non­sense. We’re hap­py. A lot more than the depressed woman on the cov­er of Ange­la’s books, who looks as though she may give up at any moment.