Breasted experiences in pregnancy: an examination through photographs

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative data from a sample of pregnant women in Hobart, Australia this article uses ‘feminist’ ‘memory work’ and the ‘photovoice’ method as frames for discussing the ways in which interviews and participant-produced photographs may be used to trace and understand pregnant embodiment. I argue that digital photographs taken by women during pregnancy can reveal important information about how they negotiate their own experiences of breastedness and wearing maternity underwear over time. Here, the concept of ‘breastedness’ itself is expanded as women’s individual embodied experiences of pregnancy are reflected in the production and viewing of their own photographic images.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback. I also thank my participants for sharing their lives and photos with me for this research. The photographs in this article are published with their written consent.

Notes

1 Discussing significant differences in the meaning of breastedness and related imagery in the industrialised world is not possible in the current article but it is an avenue to be pursued in future research projects. Throughout this article, I refer to Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand as ‘the West’. I am aware that explorations of ‘the West’ are particularly problematic and as a descriptive category, ‘the West’ is imprecise in a globalised world. Moreover, ‘the West’ assumes there is a discrete, stable, unified entity – the West. In practice, this is not so. Nevertheless, ‘the West’ is a powerful descriptor; it is nearly impossible to find a suitable replacement term. I utilise this term as a construction or a theory more than a particularity of time or place.

2 The questions that spell the acronym SHOWeD include: ‘What do you See here? What is really Happening here? How does this relate to Our lives? Why does this situation, concern or strength exist? What can we Do about it?’ (Wang 1999, 189).

3 While, on the surface, digital photography makes a project like this appear to be more efficient for the researcher given the ease of uploading photographs and organising images on a computer, digital photography also gives participants the opportunity to delete photographs which would not be possible with film cameras. My participants confirmed that they regularly deleted photographs that they thought were not suitable or that did reflect how the women wished to be seen (Rose 2010).

4 I use ‘breasted experience’ in line with Iris Marion Young (2005, 76–77) who coined the term in order to open positive discussions about how women experience their breasts.

5 In contrast, several women photographed their breasts postpartum to document ‘leakiness’, sore and cracked nipples, and the act of breastfeeding.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Meredith Nash

Meredith Nash is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Tasmania. Her research engages with feminist sociology of the body and how it contributes to the understanding of women’s reproductive health. Her book Making ‘Postmodern’ Mothers: Pregnant Embodiment, Baby Bumps and Body Image was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. She is the editor of Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences in Postmodernity (forthcoming 2014).