Embodied experiences. Visual representations of woman and maternity

Abstract

The paper presents a reflection on the embodied experience of mother and representations of mother- hood in Western culture, within advertising and television series, documentaries and movies.Typically, motherhood is imagined as the product (having a baby, becoming a parent) and not as the arduous process over the life of a person. It is presents with a universal character and it is used in movies as a strategy when they want to feel emotions: an a-historical mother gives birth, looks at his son, she takes him in her arms, and she loves him, sacrifices and she is next him forever. In other words, it’s all worth it if the prize is to become mother. In the collective imagination, these ideas have helped to cre- ate the ideal type of mother: how she should act and what value would motherhood in our society. With this premise, I analyze the omissions after the images: we are taking just a simple model of mother who destroy or idealize. Though models of women, mothers, couples and families are many more today.

Keywords

• madres
• maternidad
• experiencias encarnadas
• salud
• representaciones audiovisuales