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

[ahhhhhpushit]

I've heard this term reported by mothers so many terms that it must by the term sonographers aee taught at sonographer school.

Anybody else feel uncomfortable by it?

Imagine it being said about a baby's bits once she'd been born!

Is it just me?

Sorry, dipped off just as people were talking to me...!

Okay Line I'll try and be very careful the way I frame the question

SQ not as far on as that yet, so still at the FX stage. This will be the dating scan.

To summarise:

"That's her hamburger..." = ugh, if it a girl's genitalia is referred to in that way.

"looks like a hamburger..." = unfortunate comparison, but may be the easiest way to identify an indistinct shape on a scan.

Some of us are uncomfortable by the use of "hamburger" because of its porn-related connotations (as explained beautifully above)

Others on here are not and think those of us who are are being melodramatic about the issue (such as it is).

Worley, so what word do you use to describe female genitals that can be understood by everyone?

well I'm not one for referring to it as a hamburger.. but colleagues do frequently.. I can recall one time that I did use that to describe the three layers / lines...
I will point it out with an arrow on screen and say that it looks like girls bits. I have been known to say women's parts much to the amusement of my colleague who was in the room at the time. the thing is its much easier for people to see boys bits than girls bits..

And sonographers in the US refer to boys' genetalia as resembling a 'turtle'.

I honestly don't see what the problem is.

It just makes it easier for patients to identify.

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.

Congrats on the scan. How many weeks?

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.

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

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...

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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

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?

Three white lines. That what sonographers are actually taught.

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...

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 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.