From Redstockings to Reconciliation: A transnational, feminist study of Pregnancy Belly Casting Practices.

Abstract

Pregnancy belly casting - that is, making three-dimensional plaster moulds of a pregnant torso - is a widespread practice which has attracted media comment as a consumer trend. However, the practice, which is often viewed as merely decorative, has mostly been overlooked by academics. Academic underestimation of pregnancy belly casting is unsurprising given that the pregnant body has, at times, been ignored or disparaged by feminist theorists. The feminist art movement has also been slow to embrace pregnancy and maternity. Although academic writing on women's experience of art and consumer items during pregnancy is now emerging, how women express themselves and relate to each other through art practices such as pregnancy belly casting requires further investigation. Drawing upon a mixed methodological approach incorporating feminist theory, memory studies, affect theory, intersectionality and Indigenous studies, I explore women's use of the practice of belly casting in a variety of transnational contexts, gaining an understanding of how women have portrayed their bodies in relation to dominant feminist paradigms of the female body. I illustrate how women have utilised pregnancy belly casts as objects of memory to mould and inscribe their identity as mothers-to-be as well as to mediate their affective, mnemonic and embodied experiences of pregnancy. I demonstrate that while the practice appears to be simply one of many pregnancy consumer trends which emerged after the famous photograph of a naked and heavily pregnant Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair 1991, it has a far more complex genealogy. Indeed, I present the case that pregnancy belly casting has been an overlooked yet recurring feminist practice in a variety of highly political, transnational contexts from the late 1960s. In Chapter One, I explore Khloe Kardashian's contemporary and depoliticised pregnancy belly cast as a point of contrast against which to commence my search for finding the 'feminist' in the practice of pregnancy belly casting. Chapter Two explores changing feminist thought on the pregnant body from the 1940s onwards before turning to examine a genealogy of the feminist concept "the personal is political". Lastly, I pay attention to pregnancy's challenge to the self/other binary. In Chapter Three, I explore Danish artist Kirsten Justesen's Circumstances, 1969-73, belly casts against the backdrop of the emerging Danish Redstockings feminist movement. Chapter Four explores pregnancy belly casting in North America circa 1990. Belly casts created by artists Kiki Smith and Francine Krause re-introduce visibility and agency to the pregnant woman, seemingly in response to call by feminists of the era. Chapter Five commences with Jamaican-American artist Rene Cox's Yo Mama series which I read as an example of the birth of intersectional feminism and the unleashing of women's anger in the wake of the Anita Hill/ Clarence Thomas hearings. Next, I explore an Indigenous Australian pregnancy belly casting program, Mubali: Sea of Bellies, in the contexts of the Stolen Generations and Reconciliation. In Chapter Six, I present the findings of a memory workshop in which Indigenous Australian women shared belly cast stories with non-Indigenous Australian women. Chapter Seven explores a belly casting program in Papua New Guinea and Marc Quinn's statues based upon a pregnant Alison Lapper. Drawn from opposite corners of the globe, both cases demonstrate how artworks resulting from pregnancy belly casts may serve as emblems of broader political movements. The thesis concludes by reflecting upon the pregnancy belly cast as a symbol of the potential of social movements such as feminism and Reconciliation. Show more