My other current research
examines the ways in which Britney Spears’ pregnant body recodes the meaning and cultural representations of pregnancy.
I suggest that Britney Spears is aesthetically and culturally problematic
as a pregnant woman in light of the status placed upon her pre-pregnancy body. Spears’ pregnant body defies the standards of the male gaze but invites surveillance by the public, and particularly
other women.
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In my Master's thesis, 'Digital Deception: The Disappearance of Women Through Ultrasonography',
I examine:
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the pervasiveness of ultrasonography and the exposure of the pregnant woman as a site of surveillance and object of the medical gaze.
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the increasing sophistication
of visualising technology (3D, 4D ultrasonography) and the ways in which the rights of mother and fetus are
reconstituted.
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the notion of visibility throughout in three ways: visibility
as surveillance and disciplinary power, visibility and fetal photography, and visibility of the public fetus and the commodification
of motherhood.
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I am also interested in pregnant brides.
Given the obsessive surveillance and chronicling of the celebrity pregnancy in popular culture, it is no longer taboo for
women to walk down the aisle whilst expecting. Despite the pregnant nuptials of celebrity icons, there are other factors involved
in this new social acceptance. Whereas a bride’s role was undermined by her position as a pregnant woman previously,
now it seems that the pregnant bride is able to resist her metaphorical reduction to m(other) by rearticulating the relationship
between her self-identity and her public identity as ‘mother’, ‘woman’, and ‘bride’.
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