This article explores informants' negotiations around the performance of pregnancy "fitness" and "good" mothering through exercise. Although exercise has been discussed as a way to "empower" middle-class women, I suggest that this position is problematic in its co-optation of the language of "feminism" and also in its lived experience. For my pregnant informants, "liberation" through exercise was clearly contradictory. In this article, I argue that pregnant women are encouraged to embody a "fit" pregnancy. Findings suggest that there is no time in a woman's life when she is "free" to be inactive; she must constantly engage in a high-level of physical activity to maintain an appropriately feminine body and to prove her "self" "publicly" as capable.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Human Society
Research Group:	Sociology
Research Field:	Sociology not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Health
Objective Group:	Specific population health (excl. Indigenous health)
Objective Field:	Women's and maternal health
UTAS Author:	Nash, MB (Associate Professor Meredith Nash)
ID Code:	67740
Year Published:	2011
Web of Science® Times Cited:	42
Deposited By:	Sociology and Social Work
Deposited On:	2011-03-07
Last Modified:	2015-02-11
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