Comparing Oliver's "Pregnancy" and Waugh's "The Girl Who Made Us Think About Autonomy"

I don't know if we were supposed to make a new post or respond to our old ones, but...

In reviewing Kelly Oliver’s piece, we discussed the varying depictions of women and pregnancy in popular films. Though employing a “pro-choice” narrative, many of these films show women choosing to keep their babies and others suffering perilous fates if they do not. In “The Girl Who Made Us Think About Autonomy,” Joanne Waugh discusses the renowned Trilogy (The Girl Who…) and its complex character, Lisbeth Salander. Unlike the women discussed in Oliver’s piece, Lisbeth Salander is not a yearning mother. She is not even a warm or welcoming person. Suffered by the hands of men and authority, Salander lacks, what Waugh describes as, “the perspective of past and that of comfortable classes; she had neither a destiny prepared for her by a mother, childhood games, or adolescent fantasies about being in love, marrying, and having a baby or home” (145). This is best exemplified in her outward appearance. Described as looking like “an underdeveloped teenage girl” with piercings and tattoos, Salander’s physical appearance breeds no notions of “sexy” or “motherhood” (130). Because she does not exude the traditional categories of “woman” (mother, wife, etc.) and defies the gender roles expected of her, she becomes an open target to be violated by men. An excerpt from the book reads, “…by the time she was eighteen, Salander did not know a single girl who had not been forces to perform some sort of sexual act against her will…as a girl she was legal prey, especially if she was dressed in a worn black leather jacket and had pierced eyebrows, tattoos and zero social status” (134). Amongst Salander’s rape, torture and suffering, there is an implication that because she does not perform “womanhood” as socially accepted and expected, she must suffer a fate worse than death. This reads very similar to Oliver’s theory that women (and women of color) who do not live under society’s expectations of motherhood must suffer or die. This (again) brings into question why woman must be punished for nonconventional, untraditional or even autonomous actions.

(I look forward to talking more about this in class!)

Pregnancy: Choice and Excess

While I was familiar with many of the films Kelly Oliver referenced in "Pregnancy: Choice and Excess," her chapter made me think about and connect them in a new way. Additionally, while reading her chapter I kept thinking about the 2014 independent movie "Obvious Child," which tackles the topic of a young woman's "accidental pregnancy" from a one-night stand in a Juno-esque style of comedy, but the protagonist goes through with the abortion. This movie seems to be the exception from most teenage pregnancy movies that, as Oliver notes, "in the end, usually embrace conservative family values that endorse a woman's right to choose only if she chooses to have a baby" (69). I really loved the movie Obvious Child because (it is very funny) but also addresses the questions and challenges the young woman faces in making the choice to have an abortion in a contemporary way that is more relevant to most young people I know than movies such as Juno where the woman ends up having the baby. Unless a young woman is very religious, I would expect most college students would have an abortion if they became pregnant accidentally, and the fact that most movies do not represent this reality is problematic. One important point that Oliver makes in analyzing these films is the differences in representation between race and class. Oliver notes how in Juno and Saved!, "the teens' parents have surprisingly understanding and accepting, and tellingly unrealistic, reactions to their daughter's pregnancy" (63) - and this is also the case in Obvious Child, where the woman's mother is very calm when she finds out and even shares that she had an abortion herself. Consequently, her daughter's unplanned pregnancy strengthens their relationship. In contrast, in Precious, the mother is filled with rage. This difference in portrayal shows how unplanned pregnancies can have drastically different results depending on the teen's race and socioeconomic status. Middle-class white girls who get pregnant are portrayed as being thrown a curve-ball in life, but one that they will be able to handle and eventually have the support of their family. In contrast, an accidental pregnancy for a lower-class woman of color is represented as violent and disastrous. As Oliver notes, "this juxtaposition of beautiful happy educated middle class white girls and women having babies and abject violent uneducated black girls and women having babies works to reinforce latent racist eugenics notions" (62).

Pregnancy: Choice and Excess

What I liked most of the chapter we read was how the writer broached and discussed topics that many leave untouched due to their sensitive nature. I found all her discussions very interesting, but the one that drew me in the most addressed the issue of women and motherhood. As a woman in today's society, one can choose to have a successful career, or become a mother and have a family. Seldom do these two cleanly and successfully mix together. As Kelly Oliver states, "the dream of having it all becomes and exhausting schedule of soccer and dance lesson schedules, work, cooking, and cleaning, a schedule in which the demands of juggling career and family require high levels of caffeine and prescription drugs like Prozac (antidepressant) and Ambient (sleeping pill)." Though women have come a long way and now enter the work force, the fact that they have to choose between motherhood, a career, or an enjoyable life is absurd. Furthermore, this is a stance that only represents one side of the spectrum of female issues. As Oliver says, the 'solution' of extending fertility periods until post-monopoausal states are advertised to white, middle class women. The decision to have one or the other is no longer applicable, as the choice has expanded to include various others options. What remains, sadly, is the attitude that if women do not have children, due to their choice not to or some other reason, they are seen as unfulfilled, sad, deficient, or even abnormal. Usually, a woman who reaches the age of 50 without children has to make excuses like 'I wanted to focus on my career' or 'I don't get along with kids.' The fact that an explanation is needed is ludicrous. The opposite should also be true. A woman should not have to answer a question like 'Do you plan to start a family soon/ have children in the future?'

The fetal paradox and Excess

I found this reading to be very interesting, especially in regards to how the having a child, or an abortion, could be seen as excessive, real or imagined. When discussing the either/or mentality of having children for women, in which they either have a career or have a child but always one or the other, portrayed by cinema Oliver states, "By so doing, they attempt to domesticate the "accident" of pregnancy within the confines of traditional family values and thereby contain the imagined excess of pregnancy and pregnant bodies." (54) The description of pregnancy as an accident is one in which attaches to the idea that it is not wholly up to the woman if she gets pregnant. This being said the either/or way of looking at having children and the lifestyle it demands, as portrayed by Hollywood, makes the idea of having a child seem excessive, both in lifestyle and in future choices. This excess is also attributed to abortions in Hollywood, by making the focus of the mother and the fetus be at odds, even against, each other which Oliver calls the fetal paradox, in which the fetus and mother aren't viewed as other/within but either/or. The role of media and Hollywood in the depiction of pregnancy and abortion has created a set of norms that bring to the table a perceived excess with pregnancy.

Kelly Oliver's "Pregnancy: Choice and Excess"

Kelly Oliver’s “Pregnancy: Choice and Excess” examines different approaches to pregnancy in the media and movies, especially concerning women’s right to choose. This chapter exposed various stereotypes in movies with women having ‘accidental’ pregnancies and how they deal with them or women wanting to have babies, but struggling to do so. This chapter was very interesting, as I have seen a number of the movies and TV shows she discusses, but I’ve taken them at face, entertainment value. Among the many insightful points that Oliver makes, I found her discussion on fetal rights versus mother’s rights very topical. I think that as science has continually learned more about pregnancy and conception both the pro choice and pro life sides have had to update their stances, but pro life has definitely changed the most. It seems that they continually take more extreme positions, using ‘science’ and religion to back them up. Though science allows us a greater understanding of pregnancy and a visual of the child from the start through ultrasound, the Catholic Church and its positions on abortion have actually changed through time. It did not used to be such a grave sin to have an abortion, and for a time it was a great sin to have oral sex than an abortion. I believe that the growing legal battle between the fetus and its mother cannot be connected to religion, not only because that goes against the American belief of separating religion from government, but because the Church has constantly changed its stance and cannot claim historical evidence. The use of religious freedom by individuals, such as employers or healthcare workers, in denying women their personal freedoms is very concerning to me, especially considering the fact that these people in positions of power are projecting their beliefs on a being that belongs to the mother and her beliefs.

Kelly Oliver's Choice and Excess

Throughout Kelly Oliver’s chapter, I found myself in a whirlwind of emotions, specifically when talking about the “fetal paradox” and the discriminatory depiction of pregnant women of color. Last semester, I took a class in which we talked about how fetal rights vs. women’s rights are becoming a growing problem within hospitals. In the articles we read, (“No Less than Ravishment’: Forcing Medical Interventions on Pregnant Women” and “Behaving Badly: Punishing Women for Conduct during Pregnancy” (2000)), Rachel Roth examines the structural problems within our political and medical system which allow women to lose their rights to privacy and freedom of religion in hospitals. Roth recounts a laundry-list of instances in which mentally competent women have their choices trampled over by doctors and the courts in order to speak for the “third party” (often times the fetus or children a woman already has). Roth criticizes the current structure arguing “competent adult women lose jurisdiction over their bodies and are subjected to physical violation that is almost never otherwise perpetuated in civil society or in the criminal justice system” and “the fetus has been endowed with super-rights that exceed those of any living human being” (90 & 134). In reading Oliver’s article, I found it interesting that this is even depicted in movies where “the focus is on either the fetus/abortion OR the maternal body, but not both” (58). This is especially true with the growing use of the ultrasound which poses the fetus as an individual rather than apart from the female body.

In the section “Fertile Myrtle,” Oliver discuss the hypocrisy that comes with white teen pregnancy and women of color of pregnancy. While shows like Teen Mom and movies like Manny and Lo show happy circumstances for white women, movies like Precious show nothing but perilous circumstances and disparity. This praise vs. dire situations portrayed in movies show that Hollywood, which is often described as the ultimate liberal outlet for media, still practices and perpetuates the hypersexualized, uneducated and impoverished stereotypes that are imposed on women of color in the real world. 

The Fetal Paradox and Excess

Lynette Dixon 

I found Kelly Oliver’s discussion about the fetal paradox to be quite interesting. The fetal paradox can be found in representations of the fetus as separate from the maternal body, as at odds with it. Oliver contends that the paradox can be attributed to the emergence of ultrasounds that allows us to see the fetus thereby establishing the fetus as an autonomous other within the maternal body. Being viewed as the other within is what causes Hollywood to depict either the fetus or the mother, almost never both. I think that this paradox arises from the limits of subjectivity/ the limits of a subject under the law. There is a need for the subject to be autonomous so it is impossible to view both the fetus and the mother as one which is why debates on reproduction poses the rights of the fetus as separate from the rights of the mother. One is either pro-life in the interest of protecting the rights of the fetus, or pro-choice in the interest of the rights of the mother. But where is the middle ground? Do/can the rights of both the fetus and the mother converge?

Considering Dispossessions which proposes that we are undone by one another and thereby deconstructs the autonomous subject, it is easier to formulate an instance in which the mother does not have to be separate from the fetus. The paradox can be mediated when we consider the ways in which both the mother and the fetus are undone by each other. When we liberate ourselves from this concept of autonomy, there can be many more possibilities for being. In this case it would help expand reproductive dialogue to encompass the nuanced factors of reproductive choice that are not reduced to simplistic arguments about legal rights.

I also found the discussion of women’s reproduction as excessive interesting but I’m specifically interested in the reproduction of women of color to be more excessive.  Oliver sites movies that pose women of color as hyper fertile while white women struggle to get pregnant. What that leads to is white babies being viewed as precious gifts while babies of color are depicted simply as excess. Babies of color, specifically black babies, as seen from Precious, are the manifestation of excess. They represent/are the excess that is the black female. When considering Precious her appearance is the visual representation of  this excess and how such excess moves through society and is problematized by it. Her excess is multiplied through the birth of her children. I think that this is part of the reason that black youth face violence. Excess is disposable, excess is problematic, and society needs to be rid of excess. Where as that which is scarce is sacred and protected. 

Going back to my discussion of the fetal paradox, I think that the distinction between the mother and the fetus also comes from the fear of the female body in excess.