Stepfordized: Part 14

Isabella had never really thought of herself as a conspiracy theorist in the traditional sense. She believed in Bigfoot, but doubted that the sasquatch was real on and off as time went on. It was only when the Nepalese government declared the yeti to be real that she really allowed herself to acknowledge that the American variety may genuinely exist. She believed in the Loch Ness Monster as a little girl, but once the numerous reports of the loch being dredged and scanned over and over with increasingly sophisticated technology came in saying that there was nothing in there, her faith in the creature waned. To her, the existence of aliens was highly likely but not in the little green me kind of way. Isabella considered it far more probable that some dead, frozen mold stuck to an asteroid would one day make a lucky scientist’s career than a provable report of actual humans being abducted by fancy, faster-than-light spacecraft in the middle of nowhere being submitted upon their return. The concept of zombies and vampirism were attributed to psychoactive fungi and albinism leading to cravings for iron rich blood. No matter what the mystery was, it was just as likely as anything else to have a reasonable scientific explanation.

Ansley Park was no different.

…Or at least it shouldn’t have been.

Since her meeting with Minsuh in the gym, the fat, grumpy woman’s warnings rattled around in Isabella’s mind constantly. The idea that something about the town, be it the city proper, the rich, mansion-filled communities, or the middle class suburbs was turning women into dumb, docile housewives wasn’t even an uncommon notion. What Isabella had been calling the Stepford Virus was also being idly described as the Ansley Effect, Mommy Mania, or just plain Baby Fever by many of the first year students at David Grant. The phenomenon was spoken as if it were a local quirk or just a funny cultural happenstance that might occur in someone’s hometown like a sort of redneck twang in the voice or everyone going to the same roller rink for dates. It was to them as benign as any other populace perception of a city and for the life of her, Isabella couldn’t understand why more women weren’t bothered by it. New Yorkers were rude, LA was full of stoners, El Paso is full of cowboys, and Ansley Park was full of preggo housewives. To most people that’s all there was to it.

 It just was.

At first it was hard to see, but as the weeks turned into months the effect of the town and it’s…whatever it was that did what it did became more and more obvious. Isabella would go to soccer practice and see the girls sitting around chatting instead of going out to the field, their tight, muscular bodies softened into mushy, muffin-topped bellies that threatened to bury their ribs completely, erasing the last trace of thinness they had. A few of the girls were not only sporting flabby, jiggling rolls over their hips, but firmer bellies that protruded smoothly and gently in front of them. Three of them knew they were pregnant. Planned for it even. They gushed to the other Storks about what caused them to take the plunge and go straight for a family, but each one had their own different reason for it. Isabella found herself loitering around the snack machines behind where the girls would sit as she listened in to their conversations, trying to glean some sort of pattern. But outside of them putting in their request for the “Light Activity Division” of the team, there was no discernible connection between the cases. Even if there were, she still couldn’t see any connection between the ones who were pregnant and the rest who were suddenly gaining weight. Some were upset about it and bitched that they couldn’t stop getting fatter while others crooned and preened over their curvier figures.

(1)

The one thing that stood out to her was the peculiar mention of a scholarship program for pregnant students signed by none other than the founder’s wife herself: Claire Grant. Apparently, the school would practically pay the entire tuition of any woman who ended up pregnant at David Grant Women’s Academy and even provide free medical and childcare for after the baby (or babies) was born.

“This isn’t a school…” Isabella thought to herself. “It’s a fucking assembly line!”

The implications of the idea were to Isabella’s already suspicious mind. The scholarships would be painted as unyielding and progressive support for young mothers trying to get an education, but what it was really meant to do was incentivize girls to let themselves get knocked up for free college. Then they would all join the herd of mooing mommies while the guys got their pick of whichever baby factory they wanted to shackle to the stove.

…”Or the bed.” Isabella snickered, chuckling at her own mischievous thought.

She knew damn well that most of these girls were already on their way to blowing up like beachballs and lactating through their shirts with stiff nipples that ached to be sucked on. It was all they’d be good for by then even if they *did* graduate. They’d never get real jobs or make anything of themselves outside of the home save for the few who ended up working for David Grant and his wife or the other members of the Housewife Illuminati who perpetuated the culture in town.

But there she was again.

Claire.

How was it possible that someone so thin and edgy could become the very type of woman that she’d spent years making numerous posts online condemning? And it wasn’t just that either. The dates on the posts talking about “having sweet, sweet no kids money” were only 5 months apart from tagged pictures showing her with a dour look at baby showers, now visibly pregnant herself. Why was she so upset? Isabella had just figured that she’d gotten pregnant on accident and didn’t know it and that’s what was upsetting her, but if she hated it so much, why not get an abortion when she found out? And if not that, why would suddenly turn around and get IVF from a fertility clinic immediately after delivering a baby she never wanted in the first place?

According to facebook and instagram, Claire “Butler” had gone from goth molotov chucker to blond breeder bimbo in less than a year. And now to be paying women to get pregnant in college…Something had to be wrong.

“What if it’s some kind of drug or mind control? What if it’s subliminal brainwashing or like MK Ultra shit?

…..What if *CLAIRE* is just much a victim…no, MORE of a victim than anyone else?” Isabella pondered as she walked home alone, her head still far in the clouds.

Tomorrow was her weekend, she reasoned. If there were going to be any answers for her to find about what was *really* going on in town, she knew exactly who to talk to, and thanks to the completionistic quality of Ansley Park on Google Maps, she knew precisely where to find her.

The following morning was a cool one, though Isabella still found herself lamenting putting on makeup to come out. She had gotten up extra early to doll herself up in order to better convince Mrs. Grant that she herself was well on her way to a future as a happy housewife. That way, she figured, Claire would be more likely to give more information on what her plan was for the scholarships and why while answering questions about her own life story.

The problem was however, that Isabella didn’t exactly know too much about makeup other than how to put on eyeliner and lipstick and had to set an alarm for earlier than she would have liked so that she could youtube some tutorials to give herself a more polished look. By the time she was happy with her face, she was running later than she’d wanted and hurried out the door for the long trek up to the hills where the richer families lived. The Grant Estate was large enough on it’s own, though once Isabella had made her way to the near-mansion ‘s front doorstep, a pleasantly dressed brunette housekeeper redirected her to a guest house on the far end of the property that Isabella had originally mistaken for another house on the street. Isabella couldn’t help but marvel at the thickly hedged and beautifully built house, especially knowing that this lodging would be far too rich for own blood, but was reserved for mere *guests* of the house.

“Must be fuckin’ nice…” She thought, an amused smile cracking through her lips as she shook her head at the grandiosity of the place.

(2)

With her sleepless body protesting her exposure to stress, Isabella began to force her way up to the door to ring the bell. When she finally did, the door had swung open almost immediately after a cheery, melodic voice sang out over the sound of wood clacking on more wood.

“Just a minuuuute~” Said the vapid, peppy sounding voice.

The second she had finished the sentence, a surprisingly pretty fat woman with blonde hair and massive breasts appeared in the doorway. She wore a large pair of powder pink jeans and a white top that was effectively just a heavy duty bra with shear, floral print sleeves. Her large, fat belly sagged low into her pants with a level of liquid pliability that looked significantly softer and looser than most of the fat women Isabella had seen even in town. It was clear that her stomach was constantly growing and shrinking again, probably due to her multiple, back to back pregnancies. Her face, in contrast to the rest of her was surprisingly smooth and tight looking, with no hint of the double chin that she’d been sporting in her facebook pictures. It was clear that not only had Claire Grant not posted any new pictures recently, she’d also gotten some work done on her face and neck.

(3)

“Oh! Uhh. Hey there! Welcome!

Umm…Do you…Are you like…looking for someone?” The blonde asked dumbly, obviously trying to stay positive through her confusion.

“Hey! I’m actually a student at David Grant Women’s Academy? I’m supposed to be doing a report on influential women for one of my classes and I was hoping I could interview you?”

“Wait, really?! Ohmygosh, yes! Absolutely! Come on in!”

The moment that the woman began speaking, she almost never shut up. In the span of only a few seconds the woman confirmed that she was indeed Claire Grant and explained that she was renovating the guest house in order to turn it into a full blown servant’s quarters where her incoming staff was going to live on property.

Soon, the two were on a tour of the house beginning with the new bedrooms and their designer curtains and silk bedsheets and ending in the kitchen where Claire had just so happened to have completed a pineapple upside down cake. Before she knew it, Isabella was digging into a delicious and perfectly moist slice of her own as Claire went on and on about how her previous assistant had lived in the house a few months ago, but moved out with her husband after he’d gotten promoted at work, allowing him enough money for a house big enough for their three kids.

On one hand, Claire’s generosity in letting her assistant’s entire family stay rent free in a house larger than most other people could easily afford was impressive and noble. On the other, the idea of building servant’s quarters meant that numerous people were all going to be living in a home that formerly housed only one family, and that made Isabella wonder if Claire had thought about the decrease in quality of life for a bunch of new people moving in with potentially their own families.

Claire slowly grew immersed in her own cake and her talking slowed to a halt, a thoughtful look on her face.

“So… Isabella.” She began pensively.

“Why are you really here? I’m pretty sure that you didn’t actually come here to interview the wife of the founder of a fairly new school for your ‘influential women’ report.

I’m not like…mad or anything though. It’s just like…I’m kinda sensing that you might be as we here in Ansley like to say ‘speaking the bullshit’ to me. I’m fat, not dumb, babe.”

Suddenly, Claire seemed to be so much more than she had originally let on. She sounded like she’d seen through Isa’s ruse from the very beginning and had manipulated her into being trapped in the house with her. For a moment, Isabella was taken aback and terrified.

“This is it.” She thought “This is how it happens. I’ve been caught and now she’s gonna sit me in front of the spiral and brainwash me or something. She’s gonna drug me and sl- THE CAKE! Oh no! I went right for it!!!”

Isabella’s mind began to fill with images of herself mindlessly slopping more cake in her mouth as Claire put a pair of pink headphones on her to indoctrinate her until she was fat and ready to marry off to some rich guy. Or worse, she’d become one of the new house staff and this place was going to be her prison until she’d sat on enough dicks and had enough kids to be released back into the wild, completely remade.

“I can’t help but notice that you’ve stopped eating.” Claire said with casual suspicion.

“Oh…Um…I’m…Sorry, I just got full is all..” Isabella lied, shaking as she did.

Claire didn’t seem to believe her at all. The busty blonde sighed and smiled, a motherly care and serenity pouring from her expression.

“Look…Isabella, right? I don’t really know why you came over today, but you’re a student at my school, you came over unannounced, and you were looking for me specifically. You clearly want to talk to me about something, but you seem nervous to ask.

…Sooo…As someone who’s been there before….Let’s start with the big one.

Isabella, are you pregnant?”

Isabella jumped at the notion. “NO! Uhm..No. I’m uhh…I’m not pregnant.”

Claire tilted her head and grinned slightly at the reaction.

“And let me guess. You’re not planning on it any time soon?” She asked.

“…That’s correct. I’m only 19. I’m just out of high school. I can’t be thinking about kids yet. I don’t even have a boyfriend or anything.” Isabella said, her nervousness causing her to trip over her words and forget the things she had originally planned to ask.

The Spanish girl felt herself tremble where she sat, certain that Claire was noticing. It took no time at all for the older woman to completely dominate the conversation and now instead of probing into the mind of a brainwashed victim, Isabella found herself halfway through a fat slice of freshly baked cake and talking about whether or not she wanted kids. This was not going to plan.

“So I’m kind of trying to rule out reasons for you to have come all the way here to talk to me instead of sending me a message over facebook or something. “ Claire said calmly, finishing off her own slice of cake before heaving herself up and waddling over to the counter for more.

“You came in person. That usually means you either don’t want a record of what we talk about, you don’t have an internet capable device (unlikely), or you are trying to communicate with me in a more fast pace sense to get information quickly. If you’re trying to be quick, that implies you’re on a timeline. It might just be how my brain works, but you’re shaking, you’re nervous, and you came directly to me. So I can’t help but think that you’re either pregnant and lying about it, *want* to get pregnant and are lying about it, or this is some kind of recon mission…and you’re lying about it?”

Again, Isabella was stunned. Her jaw hung open in shock, causing her chubby cheeked host to turn strawberry pink as she chuckled cutely.

With a sigh, Isabella resolved to give up the ghost. She’d been caught and apparently wasn’t a very good liar, so there was only one thing left to do.

“So…I’m new here. And I’m an athlete. I play soccer, I run track, I play basketball and softball. David Grant is an amazing school, but some of the teachers are…a bit unusual and there’s a rumor going around that the women in this town are pretty much all like trophy wives and stuff.” Isabella began.

“Ahhh. And you’re worried that if you stay here, you’ll be caught up in whatever voodoo mind control is turning all your friends into fat soccer moms, right?” Claire asked, finishing the thought for her.

“…Yes. Which is why I came…to you.” Isabella admitted.

“Oh. So you actually like…Researched me, huh? I mean, it makes sense. That’s what I would have done. Hell, that’s what I kinda did for a while. And I used to be the posterchild for grumpy, bra-burning feminist. Which I also imagine is why you came to see me. Figure out what changed and turned the goth chick into a blonde mother of six who wears…this kinda shit.” Claire said knowingly, gesturing to her outfit.

“….Yeah…Pretty much.” Isabella said.

Claire set the plate down having already devoured the second slice of cake in record time. When she looked back up, her face was more like that of a young woman engaging in girl talk than a refined mother and wife living in a mansion in the hills.

“So the culture here is VERY family oriented and SUPER conservative and there’s NO DOUBT in my mind that people, especially women get sucked into that easier than we’d like to admit. I remember when it was me and a bunch of girls from the community college who were fighting the evil Taylor and her quest to gentrify us skinny lib’ruls and keep us in line with the ‘community values.’ And she was a total bitch about it too.

But the thing was that we had been totally fine until each of us started to like…*not do* what we said we stood for. I was stupid. I’d been screeching about not having kids and hating all the preppy tradwives in town for years, but do you know when that all changed?”

Isabella looked on, silent but intrigued.

“It changed when I started fucking their husbands.”

At that, the younger girl’s eyes went wide before furrowing into a surprised almost scowl.

“Yeah. I was acting like a total slut and sleeping with married men without any kind of protection. Like what the fuck did I think was going to happen eventually? Then, when I finally got pregnant, I fought it tooth and nail but my friends wouldn’t let me get an abortion and this town wouldn’t either, so I was stuck with it. By the time the baby was born, I was in such scandal that she was taken and put up for adoption as I had originally planned. Only thing was…now I wanted my baby.

Hormones are a bitch, babe. And once you get pregnant, they really do take over. Your mind changes on it’s own in a way that makes sense to you. You KNOW it ‘s right. You KNOW it’s the best thing you could have ever done, and the younger you who was afraid of this had no idea what she was talking about.

That one *is* mind control.

But again, it affects everyone differently and I live in a town that is very pro-life and pro-family. So when I was miserable and sobbing on the ground because my BABY was TAKEN from me, it was evil bitch Taylor who took care of me. I lost friends over it, I lost relationships over it…It was really rough. Over time, they became my support structure and the style and attitudes start to rub off. You know Curvy Kate? Professor Monroe? When I knew her, her name was Anukuare. And she wasn’t half black. She’s ethnically black. What you see now is a lot of skin lightening treatments and a lot of surgery in order to look the way she does.

She originally came here to ‘save me’ from Stepford after I got pregnant and she ended up working as a personal trainer to one of my friends, Coach Campbell, who you already know, obviously.”

Isabella nodded.

“So Anukuare was her personal trainer because Haylay was getting FAT. But instead of working out, they just hung out and ate all the time. Before we knew it, Anukuare was going by Anuki, and then Kiki, and then Katie. She started dressing like a steppie- Do you listen to London Bridges? I love her. She’s lived here forever and has always been like this suuuuuper punk goth chick. Like too grungy butch even for me. Now she has her own radio show and all that, but if you look at her now, you can tell she’s starting to get fat and her style is changing more and more the longer she’s in that studio. Oh! Right! Kate! But seriously, both of them were so so so soooo against the people who live here, but they only started looming and acting different because they started hanging around the people they claimed to not like.

It's like in high school when you had girls that would like just HATE each other and talk shit and backstab all the time, but they were also never apart and were practically best friends until they really were? It’s that.

If you don’t want to be like someone, don’t hang around them all the time. Kate was the one who decided to bleach her skin looong before she had a baby. Just Like Haylay let herself hit 240 pounds before she got all that surgery. She jumped to marry the first richest guy she met and it completely changed who she was as a person in like a year. That was when the weight piled on, pregnancy, weight loss surgery, and now she’s who she is.

We all had our own thing, but we all gave it up individually for our own reasons. There’s no curse or voodoo brainwashing. The only virus going around is baby fever and that’s because everyone and literally their mother is pregnant. We keep each other that way by choosing to have more kids on our own, but it’s not against anyone’s will. Call it culture or whatever, but l chose to have 6 kids because I’m horny and have a major preggo-slash-breeding kink. Looking back, I think I always did. Why else would I go out of my way to be fighting it so hard that I was surrounded by pregnant women 24/7, only to be having unprotected sex with the husbands of the very women whose lifestyle I was attacking . The same men who, if I successfully stole away forever or simply hung around too long would ABSOLUTELY try to turn me into the kind of stepford trophy wife baby factory that their own wives already were.

Like…How could that have gone any other way?

The moral is…We all chose this.

Isabella, if you want to have a family, you absolutely should. If you want to be a strong, independent black woman who don’t need no man, then fuck yeah, sister. But don’t get so wrapped up in other people’s lives that you can’t remember who *you* are anymore. Whoever you grow up to be will be the result of *your* choices, not the will of some guy or a corporation or your community or even your family. It might be hard and some,-hell, MOST of them won’t be easy, but the choices you make will be your own. If you end up happy, what else matters?”

Isabella was spellbound. Claire Grant wasn’t some dumb bimbo, she thought. She was a fucking sage. Everything she’d said made sense, and while it was unfortunate that she’d gone through some hardships, but as she said, it was all because of the choices she herself made.

Shortly after, Claire had to excuse herself to return to the main house before her husband cane home. She’d offered for Isabella to stay for dinner, but having already pushed her luck this far and not wanting to impose, Isabella declined the offer, settling for an add on facebook instead to keep in touch.

When she’d arrived home, Isabella found her mind surprisingly clear now that the weight of conspiracy no longer sat on her shoulders. Her teammates were just lazy and sleeping around, but that didn’t mean she had to be like that. There was nothing making these women act the way they did outside of having an environment that enabled it. If she wanted to be herself, she would just do the things that made her who she was. Once she’d had the thoughts, they left her alone.

Isabella got a week’s worth of homework done in only a few hours with her newfound clarity. She felt like she’d barely had a thought at all outside of whatever equation or essay was sitting in front of her until there was simply no more work left to do. From there, she ate a light dinner of rice and sausage before going to bed with her mind at ease.

……For a few hours.

At around 2 AM Isabella’s eyes shot open and she couldn’t sit still or get comfortable to save her life. Her leg bounced into the bed, straining her hips and glutes and making her even more restless as she tossed and turned fitfully. Eventually, Isabella got out of bed and paced around the kitchen in her underwear, grumpily pondering over a plate of garlic bread. Something about Claire had suddenly started bothering her all over again. What did she mean by “We keep each other like this?” On it’s face, Isabella knew what she meant. Baby fever is brought on by seeing babies. More babies = more temptation to have kids = more baby fever = more pregnant women who all hang out together because they all have babies.

But it was the *way* she said it that bothered her. That part alone had made what she said sound…intentional. Were the women of the town *enforcing* the culture? Were they actually trying to break people down and convince them to convert by befriending them? Isabella’s mind raced with new theories. Claire was charming, sweet, personable, and everything Isabella wasn’t expecting. Claire was the perfect friend who somehow knew why Isabella was really there and exactly what to say to calm her down and eat a bunch of cake with her while she told the story of Darth Plagueis the Pregnant.

It seemed…Too perfect.

And the in the end, Isabella thought, the “moral” of Claire’s story was basically “Aww, don’t worry about it baby, just let what happens happen and don’t fight back too hard.”

Isabella used her microwave to melt a bit of mozarella onto the remaining slices of garlic bread before she finished them off, steaming the whole time about how she’d fallen for the trick. Claire had been in COMPLETE control of that interaction. There was no way the queen bee mommy supreme of Ansley Park and all of her friends stopped being skinny feminists all at the same time for no reason other than their own suddenly bad choices. Not only that, but talking to said mother supreme for a few hours had left Isabella feeling contented, placated, and completely without suspicion as she was basically told to eat her cake and stop resisting.

Half an hour later, Isabella was furiously clicking through the social media profiles of nearly every woman she knew or had heard of in Ansley Park, hunting for signs of transformation or disparity in how they spoke in their posts. The results were dubious and Isabella couldn’t say that she’d found a number of terribly drastic 180s like Claire’s. Some girls looked different, but pregnancy and family life was bound to do that no matter what.

But that itself was the pattern.

Nearly every single woman in Ansley park with VERY few exceptions were all either pregnant or parents. Weight was widely dispersed across two extremes with very few in the middle sporting average sized bodies. Most were either very skinny with plastic bodies or very fat and pouring out of their clothes, but the number of women she’d counted without surgery who weren’t some level of fat or pregnant were in the low twenties compared to the hundreds of others listed as nearby.

“She totally just spoonfed me all that bullshit and I was just going to eat it up.” Isabella thought as she pored over more and more profiles and picture walls.

(4)

“I can’t believe I almost fell for that.”