People are sometimes just mean. A local Philadelphia news meteorologist for CBS 3 Philly, who is 35 weeks pregnant with twin girls, is fighting back against haters who said she looked like a “sausage in casing.”
“The nature of my job makes me an easy target for criticism. I will always understand that, and I will most typically just ignore it,” Katie Fehlinger wrote on Facebook on Wednesday, Aug. 19. “However, after someone blatantly called me a ‘sausage in casing’ and another declared that ‘sticking your pregnant abdomen out like that is disgusting,’ I felt a need to draw a line and speak up.”
"Everyone's right to their opinion is important, but so are manners. And while rude comments like these will never make me feel the need to change anything about myself, I find a bigger underlying issue here,” she continued. "These particular nasty-grams were directed at a pregnant woman. So this little manifesto of sorts is dedicated to every mother out there – other pregnant moms-to-be, moms reading this while their toddlers play on the swing set, moms whose kids have long since gone off to college…You are beautiful.”
But she wasn’t done yet. “Frankly, I don't care how ‘terrible’ or ‘inappropriate’ anyone thinks I look,” she add. “I will gladly gain 50 pounds & suffer sleepless, uncomfortable nights if it means upping my chances to deliver 2 healthy baby girls.”
Fehlinger added that those who think gaining weight and swollen feet are “disgusting” need to “remember a woman went through the very same thing to bring YOU into the world.”
“I didn’t respond, I tried to move on, but it really hurt my feelings,” Fehlinger told Yahoo Parenting of the comments she has received on social media. "Then I got another one…about looking ‘disgusting,’ and a switch flipped for me. I had a moment of clarity – I didn’t get embarrassed or hurt. I got fed up."
And the response she got from her post was overwhelming. Pregnant mothers soon began sharing photos of themselves and their baby bumps on social media with the hashtag #CBS3, telling Fehlinger that she looked great. "This exploded because this is the most relatable thing in the world," she later said on air.
