The Associated Press
Toppenish High School senior Gaby Rodriguez talks about rumors and stereotypes at a school assembly in Toppenish, Wash., during which she revealed that for the bulk of her senior year the 17-year-old A-student faked her own pregnancy in order to test the reactions of her friends and family for a senior project.
YAKIMA, Wash. —
Gaby Rodriguez would worry whenever anyone asked to touch her baby bump.
It wasn't because she felt shy or embarrassed. It was because the bulge - fashioned from wire mesh and cotton quilt batting - didn't actually contain a baby.
For the past 6 1/2 months - the bulk of her senior year at Toppenish High School - the 17-year-old A-student faked her own pregnancy.
Only a handful of people - her mother, boyfriend and principal among them - knew Gaby was pretending to be pregnant for her senior project, a culminating assignment required for graduation.
Her teachers and fellow students, except for her best friend, didn't realize they were part of a social experiment.
Neither did six of her seven siblings, including four older brothers, her boyfriend's parents, and his five younger brothers and sisters.
"At times, I just wanted to take it off and be done," she says. "I didn't want to go through this anymore."
But Gaby didn't give up the charade until Wednesday morning, when she revealed her secret during an emotional, all-school assembly.
The topic of her presentation: "Stereotypes, rumors and statistics."
"Teenagers tend to live in the shadows of these elements," she says.
Before taking off her fake baby belly in front of the entire student body, Gaby told her audience, "Many things were said about me. Many things traveled all the way back to me."
Then, she asked several students and teachers to read statements from 3x5 cards, quotes people actually said about her during the course of her experiment.
Her best friend, Saida Cortes, a 17-year-old senior who was sitting in the front row, read card No. 3: "Her attitude is changing, and it might be because of the baby or she was always this annoying and I never realized it."
It grew quiet in the gym as more and more quotes were read aloud. Then Gaby dropped her bomb: "I'm fighting against those stereotypes and rumors because the reality is I'm not pregnant."
She had been nervous about how the crowd might react. After all, she had been lying to them since October.
"It `happened' at homecoming," says Principal Trevor Greene, making air quotes with his middle and index fingers at the word "happened."
"In essence, she gave up her senior year," he says. "She sacrificed her senior year to find out what it would be like to be a potential teen mom.
"I admire her courage. I admire her preparation. I give her mother a lot of credit for backing her up on this."
But, the principal continues, "I have a daughter that will be here next year, and I would not let her do it."
At first Gaby's mother wasn't sure what to make of the idea, either.
"I thought she was crazy," says 52-year-old Juana Rodriguez, adding it was difficult to lie to family members - "It didn't feel good" - but she felt she needed to support her daughter, who enlisted two mentors from Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital's Childbirth Education Program to help her with her project.
When Gaby approached Greene last spring, she says she worried he might say no. He says he was impressed with her determination. He also says he was "shocked."
"I heard her out," he says. "I listened to her presentation, her proposal. And then I went through all the difficulties I foresaw to making this happen."
People might talk about her behind her back. Her older brothers might want to beat up her boyfriend. And there might be backlash - even broken relationships - when students, teachers and family members learned the truth.
"None of that deterred her," Greene says, adding he felt he needed to get permission from the superintendent.
John Cerna signed off. In fact, he left the west side of the state -- where he had been attending a conference -- at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday in order to get to Gaby's 10:15 a.m. presentation.
"I wouldn't miss this," Cerna says, adding, "It's amazing that a young lady would take this challenge on. It was a well-kept secret."
Gaby began wearing her homemade, basketball-sized, prosthetic belly to school after spring break. Before that, she wore baggy sweaters and sweatshirts to conceal her faux pregnancy.
Her supposed due date was July 27, not quite two months after graduation.
Gaby and her boyfriend, 20-year-old Jorge Orozco, met at the homecoming game when she was a freshman and he was a senior. They started dating just over three years ago.
When Gaby told him her plan, "I thought she was nuts," the 2009 Toppenish High School graduate says. "I thought I was going to end up getting into problems with her brothers. I didn't really want to get into problems with anybody."
But "I was doing it for her," he says, adding, "My parents thought it was going to be a boy."
Gaby - who has a grade-point average of 3.8 and serves as president of her school's MEChA, or Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de AztlÃÆ'Æ'Æ'¡n, Club - came up with the idea during her sophomore year Advanced Placement biology class with Shawn Myers. She's in his anatomy class this year.
"You saw the side comments and the looks at her stomach," says Myers, who says he wasn't disappointed - "just concerned" - when she told him she was pregnant.
He says he wondered: "How are we going to take all of the potential that's in this girl and make sure it manifests itself and not let this define who she is and let it be a roadblock to what she wants to accomplish?"
It's a question Hispanic teens are more likely to face than white teens, Gaby found in her research. Black and Hispanic teens continue to have higher pregnancy rates than white teens.
And most teens at Toppenish High School - about 85 percent - are Hispanic.
Gaby came clean to Myers and two other teachers, both women, Monday. The women, she says, seemed relieved.
Myers had a different reaction: "She kept talking, and it did not register. Then I just kind of leaned forward and said, `Are you serious?' I told her, `You've run a great value experiment. You couldn't tell anybody because you had to control the variables.'"
But, he says, "When you're running a social experiment, you're dealing with human emotions. The human person in me felt I had been lied to."
Wednesday, Gaby apologized to teachers and students for misleading them.
When she took off her baby belly, there were a few nervous giggles, and a loud, "Whaaaaat?!" from the audience.
Then, there was applause. And, at the end of the assembly, following a Q&A session, there was a standing ovation, the first one Greene says he remembers during his three-year tenure at Toppenish High School.
"She really fooled me. I never would've guessed it," says 17-year-old senior Vicente Villanueva. "I'm really surprised."
So was 19-year-old Angel Jalomo, a 2010 Davis High School graduate and Gaby's niece: "I didn't know what to say. I just started crying."
Gaby will present her research to a board of community members in May. It will include photos and video from Wednesday's assembly. And Gaby still needs to finish writing her report. But by revealing the project to students Wednesday, she can go on her English class trip to Ashland, Ore., on Friday without her baby belly.
Plus, she didn't want to be pregnant for prom. She already has her dress, a teal form-fitting mermaid gown with spaghetti straps.
Gaby plans to attend Columbia Basin College to study social work or sociology in the fall. And, she says, "I'm not planning to have a child until after I graduate."
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2014835260_apwafakepregnancy.html
torch bear
Seattle, WA
61 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:27 PM
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brilliant social experiment. congrats to the young woman for having the vision and dedication to carry out the project.
shut_it
Seattle
109 comments
April 21, 2011 at 12:50 PM
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holy moly, that girl is BRAVE! if she wrote a book about this experience, I would read it!
sis2
CA
1 comments
April 21, 2011 at 9:02 AM
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Back in my day, pregnant girls weren't allowed to participate in the graduation ceremonies, even though you'd never know what was under the gown. Excellent project. I hope she got her point across!
bandwagonjumper
Royal City, WA
68 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:10 PM
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I applaud Gaby and the Seattle Times for bringing awareness to teen pregnancy. It's an issue that affects many of the smaller rural communities. I would enjoy learning how everyone around changed because she was pregnant. I wish she could of gone further to also expose people to how having the responsibility of having a kid changes your life and how small your social network becomes. Pregnancy is only the first part, after you have the kid is when the real tragedy happens in why people treat you and what your life becomes. The only way we reduce teen pregnancy is through education of both the teens and the parents.
xantham
1952 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:26 PM
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"How incredibly selfish and rude. I would never speak to her again if she were my "friend". Scheming and selfish do not begin to describe this person. I pity everyone who unknowingly became a lab rat in her little experiment."
There's just no pleasing some people.
Whole thing reminds a bit of the book Black Like Me.
tjw160
Seattle, WA
191 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:29 PM
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"Instead of lauding her, her senior project should have been to try and start some kind of program where parents take a much bigger role and interest in their kids." -Peter St
Perhaps in this criticism you might want to provide some ideas as to how a high school senior might be able to act as a catalyst to this end when so many have tried and failed. I can't think of any off the top of my head.
And by the way, its bleeding heart liberal, not bleeding hard liberal. If you're going to try and insult her project, you could at least do it with "correct" terminology.
Prion
First Hill
138 comments
April 21, 2011 at 1:09 PM
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@sis2
That's awful, good thing times have changed!
It's amazing this girl pulled this off, I wish I could have been at that assembly and heard all the quotes.
Strohs
Seattle
726 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:58 PM
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Please, we don't need any more liberal bleeding hard projects. If you don't want to be stereotyped, change your ways
Wow Pete, harsh. and seems to me she is trying to change her and others in her school's ways. I do not condone teen pregnancy in the least (I've threatened to seriously hurt either of my sons if they make a mistake)
but rude and hurtful behavior from other kids would make it even harder.
Kid did a great job, and has a birght future in front of her.
tjw160
Seattle, WA
191 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:37 PM
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REALLY? How about NOT having a child until you are MARRIED and financially stable! Did she learn nothing from her own experiment? -graesan2002
Should she list everything that is a prerequisite for her family planning so you can pre-approve it?
BC18
Washington
42 comments
April 21, 2011 at 12:55 PM
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Simply amazing. I would love to read about her experiences, as well. As a 1979 graduate of Toppenish High School, all I can say is "BRAVO!!"
Tyrone Shoelaces
Seattle, WA
3868 comments
April 21, 2011 at 4:29 PM
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Her pregnancy was phony. Her maturity, insight, commitment and courage are the real thing.
sasi
WA
146 comments
April 21, 2011 at 2:54 PM
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@graesan2002:
You beat me to it! I admire this young lady for wanting to continue her education after high school. She is on her way to becoming a productive, self-supporting member of society and preparing herself to better raise a child. I also hope that somewhere between now and becoming a parent she is planning to marry the person with whom she would like to raise a family.
@tjw160:
No, she does not need anyone's permission to have a child out of wedlock, but is sure is a lot simpler to raise kids when one has a stable married homelife. She seems like she is bright enough to realize this.
Rainy Daze
Seattle
1993 comments
April 21, 2011 at 5:10 PM
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"Did she learn nothing from her own experiment?"
Perhaps she learned to not jump to conclusions.
Too bad you haven't.
habibi
Tacoma
1 comments
April 21, 2011 at 3:41 PM
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Way to go, Gaby!
This is really raising the bar on Senior Projects!!! So many kids just ignore and neglect their opportunity to learn, experience and make a difference with their senior assignments.
I hope this inspires more kids to be insightful, studious and driven with their case studies and community outreach!
fishy3333
edmonds, WA
1076 comments
April 21, 2011 at 4:19 PM
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Gaby's project must have taken a lot of planning and insight, since she was able to carry it off so effectively. She totally addressed an issue that has been at the forefront for years, and that is education on teen pregnancy.
For those of you that think she was wrong to do it in this manner, I'd bank you are the ones that would be gossiping about her like little minions behind her back.
I hope those who did talk about her derisively recognized clearly their own statements and condemnations, and end up feeling guilty about it the rest of their lives. Karma is a .... well, you know.
girl power
Washington
1753 comments
April 21, 2011 at 5:18 PM
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What would make an even better study, would be a study of all the psychological defense responses the other students express now that they know the truth.
sheck79
Bellevue, WA
103 comments
April 22, 2011 at 2:35 PM
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Zenons - I agree that she lied.
And her point was that pregnant teens were stereotyped - but isn't there some truth behind those stereotypes? A young woman made a bad decision (or failed to make a decision) and ended up with an unwanted pregnancy that will greatly effect at least two lives - the mother and the child.
I wonder how people would feel if she had pretended that she was mentally retarded instead - or dying of cancer.
I feel really bad for the boyfriend's parents - they thought they were going to be grandparents and it was ripped away.
Plus - I doubt the girl changed much at the school - people are still going to have the same attitude towards pregnant teens.
EveryNevers
Seattle, WA
1183 comments
April 21, 2011 at 5:17 PM
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Any idiot can get pregnant. What takes courage is being a responsible parent. Did she have health insurance for herself and her baby? Did she have a job? How was she going to support her baby? Was she getting prenatal care? Was she eating properly, getting rest, getting exercise? Was she getting support from her baby's father? ~ POKYHOMT
Really? Those are all questions you'd ask about someone who came clean about faking a pregnancy for a school project? I'm not gonna answer any of those questions, myself... I'm going to go read some other articles. Maybe someone else might try the same...
monica0408
Seattle, WA
9 comments
April 22, 2011 at 6:59 PM
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I would never have dared to get pregnant in high school because the social stigma was so great and I knew how completely crushed my parents would be. (Instead I went to Planned Parenthood.) Unfortunately, the social stigma has now loosened to the point where three of my nieces (children of white, middle-class, educated, still-married parents) had children too young and without being married....and they and their children are suffering the economic consequences.
Gossip and stigma are used to enforce social rules - for good and for bad. In the case of unwed pregnancies, the pendulum has swung too far in terms of acceptance because the acceptance is a big part of what keeps teens from being careful about pregnancy in the first place.
Girls, if you get pregnant too early, your chances of being poor go up dramatically. It doesn't matter whether you're white, black, brown, asian, or purple.
MaverickUW
Quincy, WA
292 comments
April 21, 2011 at 6:27 PM
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@wadical weft
You do realize the principal didn't have to lie at all in this? Under FERPA, he can't really talk about his students to outside sources, to other students, etc (many might, but they shouldn't). At most he'd be able to say "I can't talk about that" and get away with it.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/reader_feedback/public/display.php?source_id=2014835260&source_name=mbase&offset=0&direction=DESC&column=rating
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