Marco (Marcello Mastroianni) is a driving instructor who is engaged to Irène (Catherine Deneuve), a hairdresser. After eating a chicken dinner, he complains to his housekeeper that she cooks chicken too frequently. He begins to feel bloated and tired and sees a doctor. The doctor determines that he is pregnant, and an expert concludes that the hormones in chicken have made him sufficiently feminine to carry a child. With his permission, the doctors publicize this event, and he becomes a model for a maternity clothing company creating a new line of paternity clothes. Many other men around the world become pregnant as well. Ultimately, it is revealed that he had a hysterical pregnancy.