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Gender & Society
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"Getting your Body Back"

Postindustrial Fit Motherhood in Shape Fit Pregnancy Magazine

Shari L. Dworkin

Columbia University, New York State Psychiatric Institute

Faye Linda Wachs

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

This investigation explores how contemporary (corporeal) motherhood is constituted in postindustrial consumer culture through a content and textual analysis of Shape Fit Pregnancy. Using all available issues of the magazine from its inception in 1997 to 2003, the authors first underscore a key tension surrounding pregnant women’s bodies within health and fitness discourse: That the pregnant form is presented as maternally successful yet aesthetically problematic. Second, the authors reveal how contemporary mothers are defined as newly responsible for a second shift of household labor and child care and a new third shift of bodily labor and fitness practices. The analysis examines the way in which the second and third shift are constituted as mutually dependent and reinforcing. Last, the discussion analyzes how this particular fitness text draws on empowerment discourse derived from feminist gains of access to the public sphere while paradoxically (re)inscribing women to the privatized realm of bodily practices, domesticity, and family values.

Key Words: gender • body • motherhood • pregnancy • media analysis

Gender & Society, Vol. 18, No. 5, 610-624 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0891243204266817
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