Introduction: pregnancy and the media

Abstract

In this issue of Commentary & Criticism we focus on idealized pregnancy and the neoliberal demands of motherhood upon the body. This includes expanding and interrogating the post-feminist media and internet landscape that has brought about an increased visibility of spectacularized and idealized ideas of pregnancy—a romanticized “new momism” (Douglas and Michaels, 2004) as Melanie Kennedy articulated in the call for papers for this issue on pregnancy and the media. This issue, with guest editing by Brooklyne Gipson, includes a series of short essays that critically consider pregnancy and contemporary media. The section opens with an analysis by Madhurima Das and Dibyadyuti Roy of popular viral advertisement that underscores demands put upon postcolonial Indian women experiencing pregnancy or returning to the workforce in the privatized, neoliberal frameworks that propagate “enlightened sexism” and undermine the welfare of pregnant women and mothers in the #YourSecondHome campaign. Keeping stride with these important critiques, Laura Martínez-Jiménez and Lina GálvezMuñoz discuss the plastic forms of motherhood fomented by celebrities experiencing, and trafficking in, a type of consumerist-motherhood that is deeply incongruent with the labor precarity mothers are enduring. Their analysis foregrounds a critical feminist analysis on the viral celebrity images of motherhood that are not only elusive, but a fabrication in the face of the social, political and economic threats women face. If the challenges facing the control over our bodies from legislative threats were not enough in 2019, Madeleine Pownall distills the threat of stereotyping and policing pregnant women’s competencies in an excellent essay on the “baby brain,” and why it should be resoundingly rejected. Pregnancy and the body are even further complicated by Ruth Pearce and Francis Ray White who provide a compelling treatise on the film, “A Deal with the Universe,” which crystallizes the ways we could think about and reimagine trans pregnancy. Finally, Ryan Bowles Eagle illustrates how Instagram support networks counter-narrate pregnancy sickness in response the expectations of pregnant bodies. We trust this collection will provoke interesting and timely inquiries at the intersections of gender, pregnancy, and the media. FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 2019, VOL. 19, NO. 5, 750–769 https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2019.1630915