Pregnancy in the Media

Overview

The media often scrutinizes the subjects of its production. Pregnant women in particular face intense scrutiny across various media platforms. Much of this scrutiny is due to the ideals that many hold in regards to what qualifies a competent parent and what standards a pregnant woman should hold herself to while carrying a child. It can also be blamed upon the romanticizing of pregnancy that has been perpetuated by the media. Due to their presence in the media, pregnant celebrities are often the focus of public criticism and are a demographic that help to highlight the media’s portrayal of pregnancy. However, media’s representation of pregnancy goes far beyond its treatment of pregnant celebrities. Its presence in reality television and other TV programming helps to contribute to the overall medicalization of pregnancy and women’s bodies.

The Pregnancy Obsession

Beyoncé's Instagram post announcing her pregnancy on Feb 1, 2017

Pregnancy has more recently become an accessory, with more and more magazines monitoring the process with columns like “Bump Watch”. This obsession goes beyond magazines and is rampant among the general public. In fact, the most liked Instagram post to date is Beyoncé’s second pregnancy announcement, raking in 11,010,335 likes as of Feb 01, 2017. The general public’s fixation on celebrity pregnancy contributes to unrealistic standards in regards to pregnancy and motherhood. While there is no stereotypical normal pregnancy or right way to carry one, the glamorous celebrity pregnancy that is so often exhibited on the red carpet and throughout the media is far from commonplace for the average woman. This contributes to the romanticizing of pregnancy and can perpetuate body image issues for pregnant women.

Pregnancy and Weight Gain

Many news outlets fixate on pregnancy rumours and are quick to attribute the weight gain of a female celebrity to a fashionable baby bump, as apposed to actual weight fluctuation. While women have long faced scrutiny over their bodies both in the real world and the media, society's obsession with celebrity pregnancy has become an offshoot for body shaming and beauty standards. While some celebrities are celebrated for losing their baby weight in amazingly short periods of time, others are shamed for not loosing the weight quick enough. The influence of the expectations set in regards to pregnant and post pregnant women’s bodies can have negative consequences for women and their babies. Because of societal pressure, the desire to lose weight and begin dieting has contributed to a decreased period of breastfeeding. The pressure imposed upon women to lose baby weight causes unneeded stress for new mothers and reflects how society values pregnant verses post pregnant women. The expectation to return to a pre baby body exposes underlying notions that accept weight gain only when performing the 'womanly duty' of giving birth. After giving birth, women, particularly celebrity women are again regarded as sexual objects, thus expected to conform to traditional beauty standards. The sexualization and objectification of the female body post birth reinforces women as either objects for reproduction of objects of sexualization.

Media's Effect on Birth

Like much of women’s health in recent time, medicalization has taken over the process of giving birth in the US. This trend can be associated with the representation of birth within specific media’s such as reality television. In today’s age, women are being educated on childbirth more and more by television as compared to previous generations. This becomes problematic due to the sensationalism that is often produced by reality TV. Due to the platforms primary function of entertainment as apposed to education, birth scenarios are often shown as dangerous and complex matters.This kind of representation enforces the idea that pregnancy is out of the hands of the mother and thus requires a medical professional. In addition to portraying pregnancy as a threatening procedure, certain medias discredit other less traditional and less medicalized forms of giving birth. For example, in the 2012 movie What to Expect When You're Expecting, the scene in which a mother chooses to have her baby via a water birth is portrayed as comedic and ridiculous. This kind of representation degrades such practices due to their contrast in comparison to mainstream medical childbirths.This push towards medicalization has given doctors authority over the process of pregnancy, and in turn, pregnant women's bodies. This leads to doctors being able to hold a kind of biopower within this realm and contributes to a process through which pregnant women are dehumanized and reduced to vessels of reproduction. The dehumanization of fertile women is a process explored and critiqued in other forms of media such as Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. While this novel is indeed an exaggeration on the topic of dehumanization and valuing fertility over individuality, it offers a contrasting point of view from many other forms of media.