Mothers at Large: Responsibilizing the Pregnant Self for the “Obesity Epidemic”

Abstract

‘Maternal obesity’ has recently been linked with poor childbirth outcomes and health effects on the developing fetus and future person. These studies have been sensationally reported in the Australasian news media, resulting in a reorientation of public health policy toward the management and prevention of ‘risky’ fat pregnant bodies. This article draws on Foucauldian governmentality theory and intersectional analysis to argue that the framing of ‘maternal obesity’ as a public health crisis represents a gendered, raced and classed biopolitical technology of governance with implications for fat women who reproduce, and for social justice in health more generally. It concludes by arguing for the potential of the intersectional concept of reproductive justice to provide a more complex and socially just view of the relationship between maternal body weight and reproductive health outcomes.