Fashioning the pregnant body : wearing pregnant bodies

Drawing on qualitative research including in-depth interviewing and
extensive participant observation this thesis maps a particular story of production and
consumption of maternity wear in England at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Arguing that these processes are not mutually exclusive but rather intricately
interwoven, I analyse both the ways in which maternity wear is produced for and by
high street and small independent retail and also personal accounts of its
consumption. Having described the broad context for its problematic material
production, 1 go on to analyse the cultural production of maternity wear in key retail
spaces of representation. I argue that whilst the strategic and spatial marginality of
maternity wear on the high street for example can be seen to be the result of less than
favourable production issues that put tremendous pressure on margins and
profitability, cultural discourses of the pregnant body and motherhood also structure
the nature of provision and representation. These discourses which become imbued
not only in the retail spaces themselves but also the clothing sold within them, it is
further argued, are also significant in structuring women’s embodied consumption
experiences during pregnancy. Such inherent links between production and
consumption, economics and culture can be seen to be significant at the level of
personal experience as I describe through my analysis of women’s embodied
experience. However I also identify wider implications for the maternity wear
market as a whole since the ways in which women consume clothing during
pregnancy, indeed dress and wear their pregnant bodies, has important consequences
for its sustainability and future growth.
The contribution of this thesis however goes beyond identifying the need for
an expanded focus towards cultural economies in order to fully understand the
workings of a market and indeed consumption processes themselves. I also identify
the need for embodied theory to be at the heart of studies into fashion and dress.
Consumption of clothing during pregnancy as it is understood here is about far more
than the acquisition (and indeed flows) of material goods. Rather the process is
explicitly embodied. My analysis takes a progressively in-depth look at the
embodied nature of clothing consumption during pregnancy and argues that constant
corporeo-sartorial negotiation is at the heart of women’s experiences. The material
cultural significance of clothing and bodies (for example as is mapped out in retail
spaces of representation) are not merely academic nuances to be identified for
discussion, they have material consequences for the ways in which pregnant bodies
are dressed and indeed lived.