As I have been arguing throughout this book, pregnant bodies are subject to an inordinate amount of social scrutiny in the contemporary West; women must ‘work’ very hard to achieve a pregnant body that conforms to social expectations of good motherhood. This chapter further extends this theme by looking at the multiple ways in which a good and fit pregnant body with a taut, tight ‘bump’ is perceived to be an achievement. During the period of research, a ‘fit’ pregnancy was, and continues to be, culturally sanctioned and celebrated. This message was most prominently communicated in the media through the pregnancies of two internationally recognised elite athletes: Paula Radcliffe, a British marathoner, and Jana Rawlinson, an Australian hurdler. Throughout 2007, both of these women were upheld as ‘supermums’ by the media in light of their continued commitment to twice-daily track workouts until just days before giving birth (see Franck-Dumas, 2007, p. 349; Gullan, 2007, p. 118).1 These athletes were upheld as ideal models of ‘fit’ pregnancy, imbued with social and physical capital.2
CITATION STYLE
Nash, M. (2012). Exercise. In Genders and Sexualities in the Social Sciences (pp. 168–202). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137292155_8
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