Elizabeth Cronin / Stretched Out

Stretched Out

Spatializing the Pregnant Body

Elizabeth Cronin

Stretch exposes the form it envelopes with no means for resistance.
1

Stretch exposes the form it envelopes with no means for resistance.

Introduction

Ultrasound imaging, invented in the nineteen-fifties, completed the transformation of pregnancy into a story that, by default, was narrated to women by other people—doctors, politicians, activists. In 1965, Life magazine published a photo essay by Lennart Nilsson called “Drama of Life Before Birth,” and put the image of a fetus at eighteen weeks on its cover. The photos produced an indelible, deceptive image of the fetus as an isolated being—a “spaceman,” as Nilsson wrote, floating in a void, entirely independent from the person whose body creates it.[1]

I have reached the phase where every twinge, sharp move­ment, run of a lit­tle foot puts my body on full alert. Is today the day? They say, You’ll know,” but until that time comes, mys­ter­ies of the inter­nal work­ings of a preg­nant body remain unex­plained, ter­ri­to­ries unexplored.

Con­verse­ly, the exter­nal preg­nant body, the female object, has been ide­o­log­i­cal fod­der for cen­turies. From mythol­o­gy to por­traits and lit­er­a­ture, adver­tise­ments to fash­ion and dress, the preg­nant body has been con­tained and con­trolled through the media and images we con­sume, the com­modi­ties we buy, the clothes we wear. Nowhere is this clear­er than in the mater­ni­ty jean. 

As mon­strous as Jekyll and Hyde, mater­ni­ty jeans serve as a bea­con of the preg­nant body’s sup­pres­sion and expo­sure. They tell a sto­ry of the female form. From the hips down, they are nor­mal’ pants, a reg­u­lar’ pair of jeans—hiding a new defor­ma­tion of body—but between breast and hip a dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ry is formed. In a sol­id line stitched inch­es below the bel­ly but­ton, a span­dex band wraps around the waist to stretch over a preg­nant bel­ly. While the band may cov­er the bump, it simul­ta­ne­ous­ly repli­cates its form. Thus, it is no won­der the dou­ble-bind has become a key­stone of fem­i­nist the­o­ry: women are always resist­ing some­thing. She is too exposed, too cov­ered; too skimpy, too mod­est; too thin, too fat; too young, too old; too loose, too uptight. The female body is always in ten­sion, its form objec­ti­fied and shaped through phys­i­cal (and ide­o­log­i­cal) means, and the preg­nant body is no exception. 

The fol­low­ing essay and set of draw­ings explore the ten­sioned preg­nant body as a form of resis­tance through three meth­ods of loose-fit: to stretch, to swell, to dilate. Root­ed in sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, mobil­i­ty, and open-end­ed­ness, loose-fit estab­lish­es a frame for anchor­ing and delam­i­nat­ing an exte­ri­or skin from an inte­ri­or struc­ture. It resists objec­ti­fy­ing prac­tices of form and space mak­ing, while expand­ing fem­i­nist the­o­ries and his­to­ries to archi­tec­ture prac­tice. Caught between Vir­gin Mary and mon­stros­i­ty,[2] each loose-fit method ques­tions jux­ta­po­si­tions of ide­olo­gies that bind the preg­nant body (liberation/containment, pleasure/shame, beauty/monstrosity); each method moves beyond the exter­nal preg­nant body as rigid object to explore pre­na­tal organs and inter­nal work­ings as ten­sioned archi­tec­tur­al spaces (matrix/vessel, layer/mask, threshold/trap). Here, I am par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in how flex­i­ble lay­ers of preg­nant bod­ies can stretch to resist hard-shelled depic­tions of mater­ni­ty that are nei­ther sup­pressed in move­ment nor exposed in form.


to stretch: liberation/containment | loose/tight | matrix/vessel


placenta; to stretch: liberation/containment | loose/tight | matrix/vessel
From Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy: “The skin across your abdomen may be dry and itchy from all of the stretching and tightening….You may also notice pink, reddish or purplish indented streaks on the skin covering your breasts, abdomen or perhaps even upper arms, buttocks or thighs. These are stretch marks….They seem to be caused, quite literally, by a stretching of the skin, coupled with a hormone-related decrease in your skin’s elasticity.…With time, they should fade to light pink or grayish stripes, but it’s unlikely that they’ll completely disappear.” 
– Myra J. Wick, Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
(Rochester, MN: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 2018), 169.
2

placenta; to stretch: liberation/containment | loose/tight | matrix/vessel

From Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy: “The skin across your abdomen may be dry and itchy from all of the stretching and tightening….You may also notice pink, reddish or purplish indented streaks on the skin covering your breasts, abdomen or perhaps even upper arms, buttocks or thighs. These are stretch marks….They seem to be caused, quite literally, by a stretching of the skin, coupled with a hormone-related decrease in your skin’s elasticity.…With time, they should fade to light pink or grayish stripes, but it’s unlikely that they’ll completely disappear.”

– Myra J. Wick, Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy (Rochester, MN: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 2018), 169.

Stretched over every preg­nant curve, Rihan­na turned heads in a red lace Alaïa body­suit and match­ing long gloves on the cov­er of April’s Vogue mag­a­zine. Her preg­nant bump shaped the gar­ment, its form an exact repli­ca of the body under­neath. She was labeled (by some) as inde­cent’[3]—an amus­ing descrip­tion giv­en she is cov­ered from shoul­der to toe—but hailed (by many) for her fear­less­ness and beau­ty. As a preg­nant woman myself, I was thrilled to see a pre­na­tal body drip­ping with con­fi­dence and sex appeal, lib­er­at­ed from mater­ni­ty wear (she also hates mater­ni­ty jeans[4]), coun­ter­ing the nar­ra­tives and images that con­tin­ue to con­fine preg­nant women. Why did Rihan­na cause such a stir? She (and oth­ers who have dared to express their preg­nant bod­ies) stands in stark con­trast to arguably the most defin­i­tive and pro­lif­ic arche­type of [preg­nant] wom­an­hood to be found in pic­tures”[5]: the Vir­gin Mary.

The per­fect’ woman, Mary embod­ies a dou­ble-bind, nev­er touched or spoiled’ and yet, a mother—pregnant through immac­u­late con­cep­tion. As an alle­go­ry, she ful­fills her duty as a woman with­out expe­ri­enc­ing the plea­sure or shame of sex. She is noth­ing but a con­tained ves­sel. As Cather­ine McCor­ma­ck writes, The more we con­sid­er this metaphor of the Vir­gin Mary, the more it starts to feel like sheer horror….Beneath the starched sur­face of Mary is a body that has been sealed shut, from which only breast milk and tears escape.”[6] While this paints a bleak pic­ture, the ide­olo­gies entan­gled with Mary have a con­tin­u­ous effect on our soci­ety and cul­ture. Even Rihan­na, a rev­o­lu­tion­ary bea­con of body pos­i­tiv­i­ty and preg­nant con­fi­dence, is shown in her per­fect ide­al­ized form. She has no stretch marks, appears to gain lit­tle weight oth­er than in her baby bump or (pos­si­bly) her breasts, her body is pulled tight, starched, gor­geous, and sen­su­al. In an image labeled GRAND TOUR” she con­jures the per­sona of Mary. Cov­ered from head to toe in a black veil, she evokes a deity float­ing across the room, a gor­geous ves­sel of life. 

McCor­ma­ck traces the lin­eage of Mary to Artemis and Diana of Greek and Roman mythol­o­gy, god­dess­es of chasti­ty and fer­til­i­ty (two oppos­ing fem­i­nine qual­i­ties that have bound women for cen­turies). For­tu­nate­ly, she also looks fur­ther back in his­to­ry, to a moth­er deity from ear­ly Mesopotamia—Ninhursag:

Her [Ninhursag’s] sym­bol is the one now known as omega in the Greek alphabet—a sym­bol that now sig­ni­fies end­ings but once sym­bol­ised the open uterus, the flow­ing in and out of life and death. She is Tia­mat, the ancient pri­mor­dial god­dess of cre­ation, the slip­pery and ger­mi­na­tive salt water from ancient Baby­lon­ian reli­gion. She is the abyss at the begin­ning of time, known as the for­mer of all things’, or Ummu-Hubur’. Before it was a sealed spring and enclosed gar­den, the mater­nal body was a bound­less and incom­pre­hen­si­ble force not made in the ser­vice of God—it was God.[7]

The body of Nin­hur­sag presents a swelling, an open­ing, a surg­ing forth. She expands, not as a starched object but an infi­nite field, a matrix of life. To cre­ate a matrix is to expand through a series of sys­tems and rela­tion­ships, to con­struct some­thing from nothing—its orig­i­nal mean­ing was uterus or womb, com­ing from the Latin word mater’ or moth­er”[8]—and this presents a very dif­fer­ent pic­ture than the sealed ves­sel of the Vir­gin Mary that has come to be embed­ded in our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness.”[9] As Madon­na and Child have estab­lished a set of iconolo­gies and ide­olo­gies that shape our soci­eties’ per­cep­tions of not only preg­nan­cy and moth­er­hood but tight­ly bound ideas of wom­an­hood, Nin­hur­sag invites us to explore preg­nan­cy beyond its exter­nal shell, to ven­ture into the inter­nal unknown.

To step inside the preg­nant body, to exam­ine it as a matrix of infi­nite space, is to move beyond dis­cus­sions that revolve around the bulge of child, the object of a woman’s body, how she appears to wan­der­ing eyes of the world. When viewed from with­in, the ever­chang­ing space of the preg­nant body not only stretch­es to accom­mo­date new life, it pulls tight around organs and mus­cles that grow, shift, loosen, become crushed. Dur­ing preg­nan­cy, a woman’s rib cage expands 2 to 3 inch­es in cir­cum­fer­ence,[10] her womb swells to a vol­ume about 500 times its orig­i­nal size,[11] her blood vol­ume increas­es by 30 to 50 per­cent,[12] her diaphragm is pushed upwards, her blad­der pres­sured by the fetus. Every day brings new changes as her body is reshaped to grow more than just a child. 

Specif­i­cal­ly, she also grows the pla­cen­ta. A baby forms when a sperm suc­cess­ful­ly fer­til­izes an egg, when two exist­ing struc­tures join to form some­thing new. Once the egg has been fer­til­ized, the matrix of the preg­nant body expands. With­in a few days of fer­til­iza­tion, the cells of the devel­op­ing baby form into a blas­to­cyst (“a group of cells arranged around a flu­id-filled cav­i­ty”).[13] The inner cells of the blas­to­cyst become the fetus, but the out­er cells, the tro­phoblast, serve a dif­fer­ent pur­pose.[14] As the blas­to­cyst becomes embed­ded in the uter­ine wall, the uter­ine blood ves­sels are remod­eled” to pump mater­nal blood to the baby[15] and grow a new organ from noth­ing: the pla­cen­ta [ 1 ]. The pla­cen­ta is a cir­cu­lar, flat organ that’s respon­si­ble for oxy­gen and nutri­ent exchange and the elim­i­na­tion of wastes between moth­er and fetus.”[16] It is the joint between moth­er and new body, the reg­u­la­tor of life. While the pla­cen­ta grips the uterus (or womb), the baby is free to move, to float in the amni­ot­ic flu­id, anchored to the pla­cen­ta by the umbil­i­cal cord. This is a con­nec­tion forged until after birth, when, for a moment, the pla­cen­ta teth­ers a fleet­ing, loose-fit con­nec­tion between moth­er and child, inside and out­side, matrix and world. 


to swell: pleasure/shame | expand/contract | layer/mask


uterus (womb); to swell: pleasure/shame | expand/contract | layer/mask
From Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy: “Swelling (edema) is common during pregnancy when your body tissues accumulate more fluid due to dilated blood vessels and increased blood volume…During the last three months of pregnancy, about half of pregnant women notice their eyelids and face becoming puffy, mostly in the morning….In the last few weeks of pregnancy, nearly all women have some swelling in their ankles, legs, fingers or face. By itself, swelling is annoying but not a serious complication.”
– Myra J. Wick, Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
(Rochester, MN: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 2018), 421.
3

uterus (womb); to swell: pleasure/shame | expand/contract | layer/mask

From Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy: “Swelling (edema) is common during pregnancy when your body tissues accumulate more fluid due to dilated blood vessels and increased blood volume…During the last three months of pregnancy, about half of pregnant women notice their eyelids and face becoming puffy, mostly in the morning….In the last few weeks of pregnancy, nearly all women have some swelling in their ankles, legs, fingers or face. By itself, swelling is annoying but not a serious complication.”

– Myra J. Wick, Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy (Rochester, MN: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 2018), 421.

To be clear, I find images like preg­nant Rihan­na to be empow­er­ing, to have ide­o­log­i­cal impact on the loos­en­ing and lib­er­a­tion of preg­nant bod­ies. In her Vogue inter­view Rihan­na says, “ I’m hop­ing that we were able to rede­fine what’s con­sid­ered decent’ for preg­nant women…My body is doing incred­i­ble things right now, and I’m not going to be ashamed of that. This time should feel cel­e­bra­to­ry. Because why should you be hid­ing your preg­nan­cy?”[17] Make­up per­fect, cloth­ing immac­u­late, I find her to be every­thing I want to be as a preg­nant woman—why hide my bump? Mask or feel shame about the mir­a­cle my body is work­ing? There­in lies the pow­er of images—Rihanna has made preg­nan­cy look glam­orous, has made my preg­nant body feel glamorous—and such pow­er is not lim­it­ed to Rihan­na. In her New York­er arti­cle Is Rihanna’s Preg­nan­cy All Bump and No Grind?” Nao­mi Fry writes: I recalled how, dur­ing my own preg­nan­cy, a lit­tle more than a decade ago, for the first time since I was a small child, I wasn’t embar­rassed to accen­tu­ate my own abdomen. I was unlike­ly to wear a bel­ly chain, but I also wasn’t going to great lengths to cov­er up the real­i­ty of my chang­ing body.”[18]

But such is the chal­lenge of the dou­ble-bind. While images con­jured by Rihan­na or Fry speak of the lib­er­at­ed preg­nant body, such bod­ies are also con­tained. While I rev­el in my preg­nan­cy glow,’ I can’t help but ask: what hap­pens when the body no longer holds a child, when it ceas­es to be pulled tight in sen­su­al glo­ry, stretched over a nest­ed body with­in, when it deflates, sags, soft­ens, and wrin­kles? Will it still be deemed beau­ti­ful? Empow­ered? Lib­er­at­ed? Will its loose form be cel­e­brat­ed? If we con­tin­ue to focus sole­ly on the preg­nant ves­sel, are we all just Mary’s? Smooth exteriors—pure and unblem­ished, stiff and unyielding—fulfilling mater­nal des­tinies? Fry con­cludes her arti­cle by say­ing, But that men­tal­i­ty didn’t last long, and, once my daugh­ter was born my inse­cu­ri­ties returned. In the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion, there’s noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly glam­orous about the post­par­tum body—the body that remains after the mir­a­cle of cre­ation is done with.”[19]

To this point, while we have been reas­sured that our stretched, preg­nant bod­ies are the most lovely—and sensuous—of fem­i­nine shapes,”[20] that our chang­ing bod­ies are the most nat­ur­al thing in the world, the exo­dus of child her­alds dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions. Post­par­tum bod­ies are expect­ed to bounce-back.’ After birth, we are assured both uterus and cervix will shrink and become firm, encour­aged to begin a reg­i­ment of Kegel exer­cis­es to strength­en our pelvic floors, sold any num­ber of creams and reme­dies for dimin­ish­ing stretch marks and melas­mas. Bounce, shrink, firm, strength­en, dimin­ish: each has a tight­ness, a ten­sion, a return to a nor­ma­tive fit. All imply a con­trac­tion to the hard Venus of pre-birth, the starched Vir­gin Mary, the ide­al­ized object of female form. For “[h]er womb hav­ing per­formed its ser­vice, becomes obsolete….Mary is beau­ti­ful and benev­o­lent, but, like the fig­ure of Venus, she is more a man-made sym­bol than she is human. She is, as the philoso­pher Julia Kris­te­va has sug­gest­ed, a woman whose entire body is an empti­ness through which the patri­ar­chal world is con­veyed.’”[21] And this is no won­der, giv­en the promi­nence of plea­sure and shame that bind moth­er­hood and the preg­nant body.

In the Unit­ed States, polit­i­cal actions have made clear that a woman’s body is not her own. She is a ves­sel to be con­tained, her child a method of restraint. Women have inequitable access to health­care, mater­nal leave, child­care. Con­tra­cep­tive pills require a pre­scrip­tion, Plan B pills and vibra­tors are locked in drug­store box­es amongst hun­dreds of eas­i­ly accessed con­doms (male con­tra­cep­tives), and through recent, chill­ing actions, abor­tions are high­ly reg­u­lat­ed or banned. The mes­sage: women are meant to be moth­ers, they should not have sex for their own plea­sure, and when they do have sex—even in the course of cre­at­ing a child—that sex is shame­ful. As McCor­ma­ck points out, it would seem the only plea­sure woman are allowed is that of moth­er­hood. For, when we do see images of moth­ers expe­ri­enc­ing plea­sure, it tends to be focused on and ful­filled by the baby and is locat­ed any­where but in the body of the moth­er.”[22] And what if we do look into the preg­nant body, the swollen uterus, the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of sex­u­al exchange? What if we stopped and made the world look? We might find our­selves ask­ing, as Eli­na Reenko­la: is a woman’s fer­til­i­ty, her abil­i­ty to give birth, so pow­er­ful that men—and women—must inval­i­date and deny it, or women must guard it as their secret in order to pre­vent its destruc­tion?”[23]

And noth­ing would seem more expan­sive or pow­er­ful than the uterus, or womb [ 2 ].[24] The uterus is cen­tral to the female repro­duc­tive sys­tem and plays a role in both men­stru­al cycle and preg­nan­cy. It con­sists of three lay­ers: the perimetri­um (a soft out­er shell), the myometri­um (a mus­cu­lar cen­ter), and the endometri­um (an inner lin­ing).[25] Dur­ing preg­nan­cy, all three lay­ers swell to house an expand­ing fetus and pla­cen­ta. As the baby devel­ops, so does the uterus—it cre­ates a loose shell around baby, amni­ot­ic flu­id, and amni­ot­ic sac. Through the cervix, it con­nects to the birth canal and vagina—although the cervix will stay closed, plugged with mucus, until the myometri­um lay­er[26] of the uterus begins to con­tract in prepa­ra­tion for labor. Ulti­mate­ly, when the time is right, the uterus con­tracts to push the baby out.[27]

Most aston­ish­ing­ly, the uterus is a liv­ing organ that expands to not only con­nect a moth­er with this baby but all future babies. Unlike the pla­cen­ta, the uterus is a flex­i­ble, infi­nite space that will con­tract back to its orig­i­nal size once the baby is deliv­ered and pre­pare itself to swell and grow again. Blood, mucus, amni­ot­ic fluid—to stray from the hard-shelled exte­ri­or of the preg­nant moth­er to inte­ri­or realms is to veer into mon­strous[28] territories.


to dilate: beauty/monstrosity | open/close | threshold/trap


cervix; to dilate: beauty/monstrosity | open/close | threshold/trap
From Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy: “One sign that labor is starting is that your cervix begins to thin (efface) and soften (ripen) in preparation for delivery. As labor progresses, the cervix eventually will go from an inch or more in thickness to paper-thin.…Your care provider may also tell you that your cervix is beginning to open (dilate). Dilation is measured in centimeters, with the cervix opening from 0 to 10 centimeters (4 inches) during the course of labor….Thinning, softening and dilation of the cervix often precede other signs of labor.” 
– Myra J. Wick, Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
(Rochester, MN: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 2018), 202-203.
4

cervix; to dilate: beauty/monstrosity | open/close | threshold/trap

From Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy: “One sign that labor is starting is that your cervix begins to thin (efface) and soften (ripen) in preparation for delivery. As labor progresses, the cervix eventually will go from an inch or more in thickness to paper-thin.…Your care provider may also tell you that your cervix is beginning to open (dilate). Dilation is measured in centimeters, with the cervix opening from 0 to 10 centimeters (4 inches) during the course of labor….Thinning, softening and dilation of the cervix often precede other signs of labor.”

– Myra J. Wick, Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy (Rochester, MN: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 2018), 202-203.

In prepa­ra­tion for birth, the cervix[29] [ 3 ] grows in three-dimen­sions. In sec­tion, it stretch­es dur­ing a process called efface­ment. It spreads from about 4 cen­time­ters in thick­ness to paper thin, length­en­ing as it morphs and changes to wrap the baby’s head. In plan, the cervix dilates, open­ing from ful­ly closed to 10 cen­time­ters in diam­e­ter. A mother’s cervix must be both 100% effaced and 10 cen­time­ters dilat­ed to give birth, and even then, it does not pro­vide a per­fect fit. The baby still needs to twist and rotate, loosen and align to make a new space for her­self in the birth canal. The cervix either pro­vides a thresh­old for the baby into the world or traps her inside, call­ing for alter­na­tive mea­sures: epi­siotomies,[30] birth by for­ceps,[31] or cesare­an sec­tions. Luck­i­ly, the preg­nant body is flex­i­ble. It dilates and con­tracts, opens and clos­es to impro­vise and con­struct what­ev­er space is nec­es­sary. Here­in lies its resilien­cy, beau­ty, and uncon­trol­lable power.

Before becom­ing preg­nant, I had often heard, It’s called labor for a rea­son.” Birth is not easy. It is tes­ta­ment to the strength of women. Whole chap­ters in preg­nan­cy books are ded­i­cat­ed to pain man­age­ment, but I can­not tell you how many times (usu­al­ly by strangers) I have been asked, Are you plan­ning on hav­ing a nat­ur­al’ birth?”—as if any assis­tance (med­i­c­i­nal or oth­er­wise) is unnat­ur­al,’ ren­ders me less of a woman, expos­es some weak­ness, dimin­ish­es the feat of push­ing a new life into the world. Inter­est­ing­ly, Doc­tors Myra Wick and Angela Mat­tke, dis­cussing empow­er­ment dur­ing birth, speak about the use of an epidur­al (a method of anes­the­sia used dur­ing labor and deliv­ery[32]). They say, It seemed like the deliv­ery was more con­trolled with an epidural…even though most deliv­er­ies are a lit­tle bit chaos…there seems to be more a lev­el of calm…especially if there has to be an inter­ven­tion, like vac­u­um deliv­ery or for­ceps.”[33] Pos­ing low risk for moth­er and baby, inter­ven­tions like an epidur­al allow a woman to retain some con­trol over her body dur­ing birth. Why then the stig­ma, the empha­sis on a nat­ur­al’ birth, the encour­age­ment to expe­ri­ence’ the pain often depict­ed of child­birth instead of embrac­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some moments of labor may be bliss­ful”[34]? Per­haps, as McCor­ma­ck notes, birth has been made to seem too hor­ren­dous, taboo and obscene to con­tem­plate”;[35] the birthing body might call to mind a two-head­ed mon­ster, some­thing to fear.”[36] More like­ly, it about con­tain­ment of that birthing body (“Unto the woman [Eve] he said, I will great­ly mul­ti­ply they sor­row and thy con­cep­tion; in sor­row thou shalt bring forth chil­dren; and thy desire shall be to thy hus­band, and he shall rule over thee.”[37]). For there is noth­ing more shock­ing than a woman who con­trols her plea­sure and repro­duc­tive body; noth­ing more ter­ri­fy­ing than a woman who knows her pow­er.[38]

Conclusions

How then, do we engage this power? 

To aban­don the female body as a ves­sel for anoth­er and instead explore her preg­nant body as a matrix (see [ 1 ] ), a spa­tial field, is to con­sid­er the com­plex posi­tion she occu­pies. She is nei­ther a hard object nor sta­t­ic. Like the pla­cen­ta she is a grow­ing space of in-between—betwixt loose and fit, lib­er­a­tion and con­tain­ment, inside and outside—a con­stant­ly chang­ing body that expands and con­tracts to con­struct new space and new life. 

To make vis­i­ble that which is often invisible—“the woman’s body and inner life as the source of her plea­sure”[39]—is to stretch open the dou­ble-bind and ask: what hap­pens in this space? We occu­py the swelling uterus (see [ 2 ]) and view into the cervix (see [ 3 ]) to tap into the pow­er of birth, that which has been made to seem too hor­ren­dous, taboo and obscene to con­tem­plate,”[40] as gen­er­a­tive of archi­tec­tur­al space. As a form itself, the preg­nant body acts in resis­tance. It is a flex­i­ble mate­r­i­al pulled in ten­sion, stretch­ing and swelling, envelop­ing and nest­ing, dilat­ing and shrink­ing. The preg­nant body is a ten­sile struc­ture that con­structs its own space (seem­ing­ly) from noth­ing. A lay­ered matrix, it resists the dis­play of most stretch mate­ri­als, hous­ing a space with­in that nei­ther objec­ti­fies the form of its nest­ed body nor hides its bulge. The preg­nant body cre­ates a loose-fit between inter­nal space and exter­nal form. Body with­in body, it is a sea of infi­nite possibilities.

To write about and draw the inte­ri­or preg­nant body is a method of activism that resists a cul­ture posit­ed between beau­ty and mon­stros­i­ty. For, as Cather­ine McCor­ma­ck has point­ed out again and again, images mat­ter. To resist depic­tions of the objec­ti­fied and ide­al­ized preg­nant body is to unmask its pow­er. To delam­i­nate the lay­ers that con­struct its swelling mate­r­i­al and polit­i­cal forms, to explore its infi­nite space as stem­ming from inside-out, to engage its stretch­ing, grow­ing, and loose­ly-fit struc­tures (vagi­na, cervix, uterus, amni­ot­ic sac, amni­ot­ic flu­id, pla­cen­ta): these are forms of resistance.

  1. 1

    They became totems of the anti-abor­tion move­ment; Life had not dis­closed that all but one had been tak­en of abort­ed fetus­es, and that Nils­son had lit and posed their bod­ies to give the impres­sion that they were alive.” Jia Tolenti­no, Is Abor­tion Sacred?” The New York­er, July 16, 2022.

  2. 2

    Cather­ine McCormack’s book Women in the Pic­ture: What Cul­ture Does With Female Bod­ies has been instru­men­tal to this research. From Venus’s to moth­ers to mon­strous women, her work has been cru­cial in defin­ing ways that art and images shape how women see and are seen. She has encour­aged me to look. Cather­ine McCor­ma­ck, Women in the Pic­ture: What Cul­ture Does with Female Bod­ies (New York, NY: W. W. Nor­ton & Com­pa­ny, 2021).

  3. 3

    Chioma Nna­di, Oh, Baby! Rihanna’s Plus One,” Vogue, April 12, 2022.

  4. 4

    “‘When I found out I was preg­nant, I thought to myself, There’s no way I’m going to go shop­ping in no mater­ni­ty Aisle. I’m sorry—it’s too much fun to get dressed up. I’m not going to let that part dis­ap­pear because my body is chang­ing.’ When I bring up the sub­ject of mater­ni­ty jeans, she rolls her eyes: If it’s not some­thing she would have worn before she was preg­nant, then it’s not some­thing she’s going to wear now.” Nna­di, Oh, Baby! Rihanna’s Plus One.”.

  5. 5

    McCor­ma­ck, Women in the Pic­ture, 85.

  6. 6

    Ibid, 83.

  7. 7

    McCor­ma­ck, Women in the Pic­ture, 84.

  8. 8

    Karen A. Franck, A Fem­i­nist Approach to Archi­tec­ture,” in Archi­tec­ture: A Place for Women, eds. Ellen Berke­ley and Matil­da McQuaid (Wash­ing­ton, D.C.: Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion Press, 1989), 212.

  9. 9

    McCor­ma­ck, Women in the Pic­ture, 84.

  10. 10

    Myra J. Wick, Mayo Clin­ic Guide to a Healthy Preg­nan­cy (Rochester, MN: Mayo Foun­da­tion for Med­ical Edu­ca­tion and Research, 2018), 126.

  11. 11

    Ibid, 102.

  12. 12

    Ibid, 92.

  13. 13

    Ibid, 87.

  14. 14

    Ibid.

  15. 15

    Human Pla­cen­ta Project: How Does the Pla­cen­ta Form?” NIH, Decem­ber 30, 2017.

  16. 16

    Wick, Mayo Clin­ic Guide to a Healthy Preg­nan­cy, 498.

  17. 17

    Nna­di, Oh, Baby! Rihanna’s Plus One.”

  18. 18

    Nao­mi Fry, Is Rihanna’s Preg­nan­cy All Bump and No Grind?” The New York­er, April 30, 2022.

  19. 19

    Fry notes, If some­one can show us oth­er­wise, it’s Rihan­na.” Fry, Is Rihanna’s Preg­nan­cy All Bump and No Grind?”

  20. 20

    Arlene Eisen­berg et al., What to Expect When You’re Expect­ing (New York: Work­man Pub­lish­ing, 1996), 160.

  21. 21

    McCor­ma­ck, Women in the Pic­ture, 84.

  22. 22

    Ibid, 106.

  23. 23

    Eli­na M. Reenko­la, The Veiled Female Core (New York: Oth­er Press, 2002), xi.

  24. 24

    uterus (womb). The female organ inside of which the unborn baby devel­ops.” Wick, Mayo Clin­ic Guide to a Healthy Preg­nan­cy, 499.

  25. 25

    Uterus,” Cleve­land Clin­ic, accessed Sep­tem­ber 17, 2022.

  26. 26

    Ibid.

  27. 27

    Ibid.

  28. 28

    See McCor­ma­ck, Women in the Pic­ture, 106.

  29. 29

    cervix. Neck­like low­er part of the uterus.” Wick, Mayo Clin­ic Guide to a Healthy Preg­nan­cy, 495.

  30. 30

    epi­sioto­my. Sur­gi­cal inci­sion in the per­ineum to enlarge the vagi­nal open­ing, per­form­ing to facil­i­tate deliv­ery as the baby is crown­ing.” Ibid, 496.

  31. 31

    for­ceps. Obstet­ri­cal instru­ment that fits around the baby’s head to guid the baby through the birth canal in an oper­a­tive vagi­nal deliv­ery.” Ibid.

  32. 32

    Ibid.

  33. 33

    Mayo Clin­ic Press Edi­tors, Prepar­ing for Deliv­ery: Hav­ing a plan, but keep­ing it flex­i­ble,” Mayo Clin­ic, April 5, 2022.

  34. 34

    Ibid.

  35. 35

    McCor­ma­ck, Women in the Pic­ture, 103.

  36. 36

    Ibid.

  37. 37

    The Holy Bible, autho­rized King James Ver­sion (Nashville, Ten­nessee: Hol­man Bible Pub­lish­ers, 2010), 4.

  38. 38

    The idea of female mon­stros­i­ty is almost always relat­ed to women’s repro­duc­tive bod­ies; their vagi­nas and wombs have been mythol­o­gised into lethal traps that emas­cu­late and cas­trate men, the inside of their bod­ies imag­ined as a seething mys­tery that draws on our pri­mal fears of the archa­ic moth­er and the unknow­able place of our ori­gins.” McCor­ma­ck, Women in the Pic­ture, 172.

  39. 39

    Reenko­la, The Veiled Female Core, xii.

  40. 40

    McCor­ma­ck, Women in the Pic­ture, 103.

Bibliography

Eisen­berg, Arlene, Murkoff, Hei­di Eisen­berg, Hath­away, Sandee Eisen­berg. What to Expect When You’re Expecting. New York: Work­man Pub­lish­ing, 1996.

Franck, Karen A. A Fem­i­nist Approach to Archi­tec­ture.” In Archi­tec­ture: A Place for Women, eds. Ellen Berke­ley and Matil­da McQuaid, 201–218. Wash­ing­ton, D.C.: Smith­son­ian Insti­tu­tion Press, 1989.

Fry, Nao­mi. Is Rihanna’s Preg­nan­cy All Bump and No Grind?” The New York­er. April 30, 2022. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/is-rihannas-pregnancy-all-bump-and-no-grind.

Human Pla­cen­ta Project: How Does the Pla­cen­ta Form?” NIH. Decem­ber 30, 2017. https://www.nichd.nih.gov/research/supported/HPP/research_funding/human-placenta#.

Mayo Clin­ic Press Edi­tors. Prepar­ing for Deliv­ery: Hav­ing a plan, but keep­ing it flex­i­ble.” Mayo Clin­ic. April 5, 2022. https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/parenting/preparing-for-delivery-having-a-plan-but-keeping-it-flexible/.

McCor­ma­ck, Cather­ine. Women in the Pic­ture: What Cul­ture Does with Female Bod­ies. New York, NY: W. W. Nor­ton & Com­pa­ny, 2021.

Nna­di, Chioma. Oh, Baby! Rihanna’s Plus One.” Vogue. April 12, 2022. https://www.vogue.com/article/rihanna-cover-may-2022.

Reenko­la, Eli­na M. The Veiled Female Core. New York: Oth­er Press, 2002.

The Holy Bible, autho­rized King James Ver­sion. Nashville, Ten­nessee: Hol­man Bible Pub­lish­ers, 2010.

Tolenti­no, Jia. Always Be Opti­miz­ing.” In Trick Mir­ror: Reflec­tions on Self Delu­sion, 63–94. New York: Ran­dom House, 2019.

Tolenti­no, Jia . Is Abor­tion Sacred?” The New York­er. July 16, 2022. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/is-abortion-sacred.

Wick, Myra J. Mayo Clin­ic Guide to a Healthy Preg­nan­cy. Rochester, MN: Mayo Foun­da­tion for Med­ical Edu­ca­tion and Research, 2018.

Uterus.” Cleve­land Clin­ic. Accessed Sep­tem­ber 17, 2022. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22467-uterus.