More Pregnant Pictures

Abstract

In contemporary U.S. law and popular culture, it is a politically fraught act to convey what is in the pregnant belly. New York Magazine, in 2009, termed women's paintings of their fetuses on their own pregnant bellies “lowbrow” and “despicable.” Soon after, Dr. George Tiller was murdered for providing legal late term abortions that credited pregnant women's self-representations, and talk radio had difficulty condemning the shooter. Gonzales v Cathart (2007) supports this disdain for women's power to portray by suggesting that women do not have the ability correctly to judge the need to terminate their pregnancies, and might suffer crippling “abortion regret” after representing the fetus incorrectly.Photographs of pregnancy are also sites of cultural struggle. Annie Leibovitz's portrait of Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine broke a widespread taboo by representing Moore as a glamorous consumer of lifestyle choices, who had both a successful career and a family. This important image attributed feminine agency as well as glamour to Moore. It was greeted initially with widespread public outrage but rapidly became iconic as numerous others imitated the pose, including Bruce Willis and Leslie Nielsen, who parodied it as ersatz pregnant men.A second barrier was broken by pregnant transman Thomas Beatie, whose well-publicized images significantly queered the Demi Moore pose. Although Beatie himself is conservative on gender codes, his images shift the feminine—and feminist—configuration of the Demi Moore pose to a more heterogeneous configuration, hopefully helping to expand future gender rights and freedoms.