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

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.