Use of the term "hamburger" by sonographers to describe baby girl "bits"

well i have heard bean for clitoris as in 'flick the bean' etc etc but bean is a commonly used term for an embryo pre 12wks i am going for a scan to see the bean, 'sticky bean vibes' etc i have seen and heard it used LOADS on various parenting forums, i have NOT ever until this thread come across the term 'hamburger' relating to female genitals or porn. its food, and it just so happens that at the scan i had for my dd, her privates did indeed look like a burger bun and the sonographer said, those three lines that look like a burger bun. i see no reason why i should be offended by that.

language is one of those marvellous things where one word can have many meanings and be used by a variety of different people to mean something different. especially local dialect etc, i have heard people use terms like 'you have a cob on' or 'a mard' etc to mean bad moods, but a 'cob on' can mean other things as well, like an erection. thats one of the great joys of language the wide way in which its used and thats all i see with the scan language they are using an easily recognisable likeness of a burger bun, to the image of the private parts on an ultrasound scan, nothing more, nothing less, it is describing a likeness.

"but 'bean' for an embryo is ok as that is not a foodstuff which is linked to porn? "

I've heard bean used to describe an adult clitorus

but they also sometimes use the word "leg" in porn. Doesn't mean it is associating a baby with porn if you talk about it's leg

hamburger, bean, leg, I don't think of any of these as "porn words" just because they may be used in porn. There are some words and phrases that are definitely porn words because there is an instant association

but if you say hamburger in a non porn context, how many people think of porn? I think of a hamburger

bean might be okay, because that's probably more associated with Mexican food and they had Frida Kahlo? is that right?

god knows, 4madboys...

why assume that's what has happened here? i know about hamburgers, so i know what to look for on a scan. didn't have a clue until last night that a 'hamburger' was a widely-used term for women's genitals. (tbh i doubt it is in general parlance, it's not like i've had a sheltered upbringing).

much more likely that the universality of the burger and bun meant that it's a very practical descriptor for sonographers to use so that the majority of people know what they are looking for on an otherwise bafflingly unfamiliar set of images.

yes so do i aitch i really hate being told what i should be offended by, there are plenty of things i am offended by with regards to porn and the sexualisation of young girls/women in modern society, but the terminology used by a sonographer is not one of them!

but 'bean' for an embryo is ok as that is not a foodstuff which is linked to porn? again i had no idea that hamburger was linked to porn till i read this thread and now its linked to rape culture...

fetuses labia can swell inuteru and can look like testicles. which is hard to diferentiate sometimes. the cord laying between the legs can imitate three white lines and could be hiding male anatomy. some men see the cord and assume they have a well endowed son at first glance.

I said that I'm uncomfortable that the American fast food terms that fed into the vocabulary of porn have also fed into the vocabulary of sonograms.

Interesting stuff.

i actually object to people telling what I should be offended by tbh. it is a term used to describe what you can see on a scan, at my 28wk scan it looked VERY like a burgerbun, that IS what it looked like. interestingly my friend had a scan for her ds2 and said it was very obvious that he was a boy by the 'little chipolata' she was joking but she said, thats what it looked like, we are simply describing things, it has been done in literature and spoken language thoughout the ages. no one is saying it IS that or would use that term to descibe them once born but in the instance of an ultrasound scan that is what the image looks like.

i take huge offence at the assertion that i am participating in promoting the rape culture because i do not give a fuck that sonographers use 'the bit that looks like the shape of a hamburger' to point to a blurry black and white ultrasound image on a monitor when establishing gender.

'there's your girl's hamburger' = offensive
'there, that bit that looks like the shape of a hamburger' = inoffensive

and as for the idea that it's fast food americana that's now a problem...

Three white lines. That what sonographers are actually taught.

what else does it look like then? because a lot of parents do think they see a boy before they're told what girls in utero look LIKE. Is there a meet free comparison that everyone would instantly understand and recognise?

It's uncomfortable that American fast food terms that became part of porn vocab also seem to have become part of sonogram vocab.

really likening babies to food is crass? what about talking about them in terms of delicious etc, i have often said my babies are so 'scrumptious' i could eat them! obviously i never would, its just a phrase that sort of describes that all encompassing love i feel for them.

i assumed it was the objectification of women as meat etc and the link to porn that people didnt like? i can understand that but as i said until i read this thread it had simply not occured to me to link the descriptive term 'hamburger' of a female babies privates to porn. it is quite simply a descriptive term, saying what you see on the scan, that IS what it looks like. in the same way as the very early baby scans you get, the baby often looks bean shaped or sort of like a little alien. i am not calling the baby an alien, but it looks like one and people DO call their unborn child 'bean' people OFTEN refer to their 'little bean' for when going for the first scan etc, infact i have seen people post 'sticky bean vibes' for when someone is threatening with miscarriage? is that offensive as well then as you are describing the embryo as a bean, despite the fact that in the very early stages it does look like that? or is that ok cos its not gender related?

I don't feel uncomfortable with it because I understand it as "don't look for the vulva shape you are familiar with, it looks different on the scan, like a......." because in utero female genetalia can be mistaken as testicles as they are quite enlarged?

4mb you should be though. That's called rape culture and it's ingrained so much it relates to girls in utero. How very horrible is that?

I have two girls, I would never have linked this to porn, but if the sonographer/person doing the scan (since when did we adopt the USA talk for this?), had described it as a hamburger, I would have been disgusted.

Like I said upthread, the whole fast food Americana thing makes me uncomfortable.

It's unnecessary and makes the sonographers saying it sound a bit uninformed, when they are actually very skilled, but that's just my view.

The food link doesn't bother me at all, so I have no idea. I can see how it could be problematic but it's not something which I personally find offensive.

but it's not just women = meat that's the problem, though, is it? there was general agreement further down that if a boy happened to be indicated by three lines in the shape of a hamburger then saying so would also be crass.

so the objection must be that anything to do with babies being likened to a food product is crass, i think? has to be. otherwise the boy thing wouldn't have been a problem?

Oh I see the connection now. I suppose I hadn't been thinking "hamburger = meat", to me "meat" would be like a raw steak or a joint or chicken portions or something. Of course a hamburger is made of meat but it's not the first association I'd make, because it's more about the image of the bun with something in it.

I thought that the distaste was about hamburger equalling tasty/something you eat and it being distasteful to refer to women's genitals in this way, let alone a tiny baby not even born yet.

at my 20wks can the sonograpther showed us but it wasnt very clear, at the scan i had at 28wks the three lines and 'bun' type appearance were VERY obvious, not that i then believed i was having a girl

until this thead on mn i had not heard of female privates referred to as a 'hamburger' other than for the sex scan purposes, i certainly didnt link it to pornography or the degredation of women by likening them to 'meat' etc. to me it is simply a visual description of what it DOES look like on the ultrasound scan and not something to be offended by.

clothes your right, at 20 weeks we can see the three white lines, sometimes the labia but at 30+ weeks it does look like the bun. like three layers... now I'm thinking of it.. it reminds me of a whoopie pie..
is that a better term than hamburger ?
this is her whoopie pie...

You could well be right about that Clothes - I thought that's what the sonographer said (labia), but I may have misheard or misconstrued her.

Thanks chocladoodle! 13 plus 5 weeks. So far, so good

IC, I looked it up on the internet and apparently the 'bun' bits are the internal two sections of the clitoris. The line 'burger' in the middle is the labia. That would make more sense to me because the labia aren't very big but the internal part of the clitoris is.

It could be wrong though because the internet sometimes is.

Congrats on the scan. How many weeks?

So I asked my sonographer what she described on the screen to tell parents they are having a girl and she said:
"I say, 'you see those three lines? that shows the baby is a girl."
I said, "I've heard it's sometimes referred to as a hamburger..?"
She said "Yes, some do call it that because in the later scans, when you can see the labia, they look like the bun around a hamburger."

Well, I said I'd ask!!

PS all appeared well at the scan.