Motherhood and Media

This past week, I belatedly watched the Hulu teen comedy Crush (2022). At the start of the movie, the protagonist Paige first develops a crush on her classmate A.J. when they pair up together for the "egg baby" project.  Watching this scene, I was immediately filled with nostalgia; I remember doing a similar project in fifth grade... though for the life of me I cannot remember if I had a partner or not. I do remember dutifully keeping my 'parenting' journal, which strangely feels like it parallels my modern (real) motherhood habit of tracking my baby's needs and habits in a brightly-colored app.  It was in high school, though, that the big "parenting preparation project" occurred. Rather than eggs or a bag of flour, in my high-school we simulated parenting through what I call the dreaded 'Robo-Baby.' 

The internet loves a good dogpile. Social media moves swiftly and furiously when a new "main character" has been announced, and it's crazy how a nearly anonymous someone becomes a talking point around the world. With all the posting about Ana Mardoll today or whoever is the new hot topic by the time this posts, it may be hard to remember that just days ago that target was... Momlife_comics.  Momlife_comics is an Instagram comic that became the target of rage, amusement, and mockery for about a day on Twitter. I honestly don't know how the recent attention started, and I've decided for the sake of my sanity not to find out (researching Twitter accounts seemed like a rather depressing idea of how to spend my time). I do know, though, that the reach of the attention was vast; my husband and I have shockingly different Twitter algorithms and follow very different people, but when I started talking to him about Twitter dogpiles and an online comic, he immediately said...

This afternoon, I watched a bit of television while under the weight of a sleeping baby. I had tried twice to put him down in his crib, but each such attempt ended in waking, increasing fussing, and then full on crying. Today, the place he clearly most wanted to nap was snuggled on my body — and no substitutes were cutting it. Perhaps that's why the shows I watched during that time resonated so much: the first episode of HBO's The Baby and the first episodes of Netflix's imported Japanese reality show import Old Enough .

In the month or so before my due date, my family and I watched a whole slew of mediocre comedies about pregnancy, some of which I still plan on writing about in the next few months. And one of the last movies of this set that I watched was the 2012 comedy What to Expect When You're Expecting.

In celebration of Valentine's Day this year, my husband and I decided to watch a movie that had nothing at all to do with pregnancy: the 1984 romantic comedy Splash . Well, I should say that I decided. He merely told me that he'd never seen the movie, and I delightedly declared that we therefore needed to watch it immediately. But it really does have nothing to do with pregnancy... at least I thought it didn't when I suggested it.  As I watched this retelling of The Little Mermaid , however, I couldn't help but think that the story and all of its similar iterations actually could be viewed rather easily through the lens of a pregnancy metaphor.    Art credit : Karamfila,  @karamfila.s on Instagram

 As many of you may know, I really love to analyze both printed texts and films for what they have to say about changing societal contexts. (Heck, I love it so much that it's essentially what I got my first post-undergrad degree in!)  Well, as I've officially hit third trimester, I've decided it's a good time to do a dive into some movies, both older and newer, that feature pregnancy.  I was inspired to choose  People Will Talk , a film from 1951 starring Cary Grant and Jeanne Crain, as my first movie because I also managed to find a vintage pregnancy book from the era a few months ago at a local used bookstore. The book, The Story of Human Birth by Dr. Alan Frank Guttmacher, was first published under its title in 1947, and I think together these texts say a lot about pregnancy and norms from the late 1940s and early 1950s.

I have a thesis: retail therapy can be a real and effective anxiety aid, especially during pregnancy. No, I'm not saying that because I want to justify being a shop-o-holic! Here's what I mean... What comes up when you search for a "pregnant shop-o-holic" stockphoto