'Corporeographies' of pregnancy: 'bikini babes'

Drawing on Judith Butler's notion of performativity I examine some of the a mbivalences and contradictions surrounding the exposure of pregnant bodies in public places. I focus on a bikini contest that was held on 7 October 19 98 for pregnant women in Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand. I also focus on the narratives of thirty-one women who were pregnant for the first time and living in Hamilton, Aotearoaa/New Zealand. There are normative expectation s that women will do pregnancy in specific ways. For example, when occupyin g public places they are expected to act in a manner that is demure and mod est. Such behaviours are repeated over time, eventually taking on the appea rance of being 'natural'. The pregnant women who entered the bikini contest momentarily destabilised these expected behaviours causing 'pregnancy trou ble'. The contestants were described by organisers of the contest as "pregn ant women with attitude". Parodying more normative beauty pageants the cont estants (im)pregnated the streets. Yet at the same time the contestants rei terated hegemonic discourses of pregnancy by celebrating motherhood as a gl orious and beautiful thing. This indicates the multiple ways in which pregn ant women and others negotiate pregnancy resulting in a variety of complex subject positionings.