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It is the aim of this project to:
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investigate how the pregnant body is constructed
in Australia based on the narratives of pregnant women of varying social class and ethnic backgrounds at each stage of pregnancy.
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gain an understanding of how women of varying
backgrounds experience their pregnant body in public and private spaces.
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understand how pregnant women use the
concepts of the body, the self and identity in their narratives and how these differ from those constructed by biomedicine,
culture and feminisms.
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understand how pregnant women interpret the
cultural scripts or norms for appropriate behaviour and comportment during pregnancy, surrounding motherhood in the media
(eg pregnant body image, exercise, celebrity pregnancy).
There have
been few significant studies underlining the complexity of the pregnant body, particularly ones that consider women’s
own voices or narratives as powerful sites of analysis:
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Few longitudinal
studies have tracked women’s experiences and emotions for the entire duration of pregnancy and the relationship of a
pregnant woman to her changing body.
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A number
of studies focus on the postpartum body rather than the pregnant body.
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Many studies
about motherhood focus on Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking, educated, employed, and middle-class women as the participant population
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In addition, a number of studies generalise
that pregnant women feel uncomfortable in public spaces due to their changing bodies. However, given the multitude of images
of pregnant women in the media in the last few years, I think the attitudes surrounding appropriate pregnant behaviour and
images of pregnancy have evolved from this dominant image paradigm and many pregnant women feel comfortable being seen in
public and talking about pregnancy.
Study of the body is especially interesting
for contemporary feminism because of the emphasis on thinness and beauty for women in popular culture. As pregnancy does not
conform to this cultural paradigm of thinness, I believe researching the pregnant body will make an important contribution
to these debates.
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