2013-12-08
Explanation
The Joke
A doctor (obstetrician) tells a woman: "Yeah, so about ten pounds of stuff just came out of your vagina." The caption below reads: "If I were an obstetrician, I would do this after every delivery."
The Humor
The comic imagines how an obstetrician might describe childbirth in the most bluntly reductive and unromantic terms possible. Rather than the typical warm, congratulatory announcement ("It's a boy/girl!"), the doctor describes the birth as "about ten pounds of stuff" coming out, stripping away all the emotion and significance of the moment. The caption frames this as something the comic's author (Zach Weinersmith) would personally do after every delivery if he were an obstetrician, suggesting he finds the idea of aggressively understating one of life's most momentous events to be endlessly amusing. The humor relies on the contrast between how society typically treats childbirth (as sacred, beautiful, life-changing) and the technically accurate but hilariously clinical and dismissive way the doctor describes it.