Summary Of Notes From A Feminist Mothering By Erin Wunker

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Hello, I’m Audrey and today in my seminar I will be exploring the theme of patriarchal regulation of women’s bodies, as seen in Erin Wunker’s essay collection Notes from a Feminist Killjoy. The goal of this presentation is to reveal how this theme is not only central to Wunker’s essay collection but to feminism as a whole. Among other things, I will be discussing the “Notes on Rape Culture” section of this book. If that is not a topic you don’t feel comfortable engaging with at this moment in time, please feel free to step out or put in headphones.

Wunker quickly establishes the theme of patriarchy’s regulation of women’s bodies as a central one to her essay collection when she opens her introduction with a discussion of the response complete …show more content…

When discussing the specific ways that other parents tried to communicate with her when she was visibly pregnant, Wunker makes note of the warnings she received about what would soon happen to her body: “how (she’d) age and slide and sag in ways that weren’t appropriate, but were inevitable” (176). Through this Wunker makes it clear that women and their bodies are treated differently during pregnancy, an experience that gets various meanings about what women should be projected onto it. Yet more importantly, Wunker exposes the patriarchal narrative that only values women’s bodies for their desirability, thus demonizing women who are not desirable and anything, even natural processes such as pregnancy and aging, that make it more difficult for women to adhere to patriarchal beauty standards. Wunker later highlights how unfair it is that this same scrutiny is not applied to men: “Remember how Leonardo DiCaprio highlighted again that aging as a man is acceptable and fashionable? Dad-body isn’t a bad thing. You know what is? Mom Jeans” (181). Here, of course, Wunker is making a point to emphasize that it is not that men’s bodies should also be scrutinized. Rather that all bodies should be treated as natural and normal regardless of gender and