Our Bodies, Our Blogs: Rewriting the Maternal Body Online

• In Event: 577 - Section on Body and Embodiment Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 01. Bodies and Gender

Abstract

From and content and thematic analysis of 47 blogs with in the mommy blog genre over a two year period, this paper finds that the physical changes that accompany maternity lead many women to a nascent feminist politics. Through the experiences of pregnancy, labor and birth, and post-partum life, many bloggers and their readers discover how inaccurate, misleading, and absent discourse surrounding this experience has been. Digital platforms, such as blogs, allow users to create content that recovers and re-writes maternity. Mothers are of the most active social media users and their creation of content and network activities produce massive profits for digital media companies. This paper weighs the proprietary nature of digital media against its potential for radical critique and social change via the mom blog genre.

Author

• Kara M. Van Cleaf