Your Kids Say 'Mom.' Your Clothes Say Otherwise”: Pregnant Fashion Dolls and Visual Culture

  • Sara Wilson McKay Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Denise Amy Baxter University of North Texas

Abstract

In this paper, an art educator and art historian introduce a visual culture analysis of representations of the pregnant body, inspired by nine pregnant fashion dolls produced by Page Boy Maternity in the 1950s. The dolls raise questions about how and what the pregnant body signifies and what the maternal means in representation and practice. We offer our analysis of representations of pregnancy in art, advertising, and dolls as catalysts for intersections of art education and art history as visual culture discourse in the representations of the maternal.

Author Biographies

Sara Wilson McKay, Virginia Commonwealth University

Sara Wilson McKay is assistant professor of art education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Since writing her dissertation on the politics of vision and visuality at The Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Wilson McKay’s research has extended to include the ways in which works of art create new seeing, how looking can be a dialogic process, and the possibilities of seeing more of the educational process in and through art. Employing critical and new media theory in her work, her publications range from practical pedagogical models for teachers of art to theoretical essays considering art and education in a broader purview. Recent publications include: “Imagined Possibilities: New Media Theory in Art Education†in the Information Technology and Teacher Education Annual 2006, “Living the Questions: Technology-Infused Action Research in Art Education†in Art Education: The Journal of the National Art Education Association (November 2006) and “People Should Come to Work: Unbecoming Cartesian Subjects and Objects in Art Education†in the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education (2005).

Denise Amy Baxter, University of North Texas

Denise Amy Baxter is assistant professor of art history at the University of North Texas, where she teaches courses on European art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gender and sexuality in the visual arts, and theories and methods of art history. Her research focuses on the relationships between material culture and the constitution of the self. Her publications include: “Two Brutuses: Violence, Virtue, and Politics in the Visual Culture of the French Revolution†in Studies in EighteenthCentury Life (Winter 2006), “Fashions of Sociability in Jean-François de Troy’s tableaux de mode, 1725-1738,†in Alden Cavanaugh, ed., Performing the “Everydayâ€: The Culture of Genre in the Eighteenth Century (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2007), and the forthcoming article “Parvenu or Honnête homme: The Collecting Practices of Germain-Louis de Chauvelin,†Journal of the History of Collections. She is currently writing a book titled Fashion and the Roots of Modernism in J.-F. de Troy’s tableaux de mode.

Published
2007-10-01
How to Cite
MCKAY, Sara Wilson; BAXTER, Denise Amy. Your Kids Say 'Mom.' Your Clothes Say Otherwiseâ€: Pregnant Fashion Dolls and Visual Culture. Visual Culture & Gender, [S.l.], v. 2, p. 49-61, oct. 2007. ISSN 1936-1912. Available at: <http://vcg.emitto.net/index.php/vcg/article/view/19>. Date accessed: 28 apr. 2024.
Citation Formats
Issue
Vol 2 (2007)
Section
Articles