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Abstract

Negative body image is often pronounced during the postpartum period, and many new mothers take up intensive exercise routines or weight-loss diets in order to “bounce back” to their pre-pregnancy bodies. However, other women attempt to regain the normalcy associated with their non-maternal selves by undergoing “mommy makeover” surgery. The typical mommy makeover is an elective plastic surgery procedure comprising liposuction, abdominoplasty, and mammoplasty and/or mastopexy, and aims to treat the perceived damage caused by pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. Although formally categorized as a cosmetic operation, the discourse surrounding mommy makeovers describes the surgery as reconstructing the normal, pre-pregnancy body from the abnormality induced by gestation, consequently distinguishing the procedure from others not explicitly associated with maternity and pathologizing the postpartum body. Thus, this study moves beyond extant discussions of postpartum pathologization that are limited to psychiatric illness by examining mommy makeovers as a site of postpartum physical pathologization. Through a digital ethnography of patient narratives, I find that when coupled with extant postpartum body dissatisfaction and clinical diagnoses of physical anomalousness, the restorative contextualization of mommy makeovers extends the medicalization of pregnancy into the postpartum period, portrays new mothers as candidates for surgical intervention, and ultimately, pathologizes the postpartum body.

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