Journal articles on the topic 'Alfred H. Barr, Jr'

This article analyzes the rhetorical and discursive resonance of the claims by artists and art professionals in Brazil in the 1950s of a connection to the Bauhaus. I examine the curricula of two new art schools established in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, emphasizing the role of central figures, including Mário Pedrosa, and the works by artists trained at the schools, and study paintings by Lygia Clark that in part elicited Alfred H. Barr, Jr. in 1957 to dismiss Brazilian contemporary art as “Bauhaus exercises.” Rather than a case of imitation, as Barr suggested, Brazilian actors transformed Bauhaus ideas, mediated by Cold War re-interpretations of the German school and its approaches to artistic education, to articulate tactics of citation and adaptation and to assert a non-derivative, radical conception of modernism.

During New York City's newly opened Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA's) fourth exhibition season of 1932–33, while director and intellectual leader Alfred H. Barr, Jr. was on sabbatical leave in Europe, interim director Holger Cahill mounted a show of 18th- and 19th-century American arts and crafts. Offered for sale in New England as antiques at the time of the show, the items on display in Cahill's American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America 1750–1900 obscured the divisions between the avant-garde and the traditional, between high art and the everyday object. In an exhibit of items not easily categorized as modern nor properly considered art, MoMA admitted such local antiques and curiosities as weather vanes and amateur paintings into spaces otherwise reserved for the likes of Cézanne and Picasso.

In 1978, in its seventh issue, October published the travel diaries written by Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who would go on to become the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art, during his two-month sojourn in Russia in 1927–28. They were accompanied by a note from Barr's wife, Margaret Scolari Barr, who had made the documents available, and an introduction written by Jere Abbott, an art historian and former director of the Smith College Museum of Art who had returned to his family's textile business in Maine. Abbott and Barr had made the journey together, traveling from London in October 1927 to Holland and Germany (including a four-day visit to the Bauhaus) and then, on Christmas Day 1927, over the border into Soviet Russia. Abbott, as Margaret Barr had noted, kept his own journal on the trip. Abbott's, if anything, was more detailed and expansive in documenting its author's observations and perceptions of Soviet cultural life at this pivotal moment; and his perspective offers both a complement and counterpoint to Barr's. Russia after the revolution was largely uncharted territory for Anglophone cultural commentary: This, in combination with the two men's deep interest in and knowledge of contemporary art, makes their journals rare documents of the Soviet cultural terrain in the late 1920s. We present Abbott's diaries here, thirty-five years after the publication of Barr's, with thanks to the generous cooperation of the Smith College Museum of Art, where they are now held.

Diego Rivera made the following sketches during a seven-to-eight-month stay in the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1928. A prominent member of the Partido Comunista de México (Communist Party of Mexico), Rivera traveled to Moscow to participate in the tenth-anniversary celebrations of the 1917 Revolution. Word of Rivera's dedication to muralism as a politically potent art form preceded his arrival, and he quickly became embroiled in debates about Soviet art's ideological aims and physical characteristics. He lectured on monumental painting at the Komakademiia (Communist Academy) and joined the Oktiabr' (October) group, a body of artists—many former Constructivists—working in varied media but united in their rejection of easel painting in favor of works intended for public display and mass audiences. Rivera also received a commission from Anatolli Lunacharsky, the first Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment, for a fresco cycle (ultimately unrealized) at the Red Army's headquarters. As Maria Gough argues in this issue, the group of drawings, long assumed to be from a single notebook, is likely an amalgamation of sketches created during two distinct events, the tenth-anniversary celebrations in November 1927 and the May Day festivities of the following year. Rivera's sketches capture his reaction to these officially mandated public demonstrations—spectacles so large in scale that they defined a new type of mass political event. In January 1928, Rivera met two young American scholars—Alfred H. Barr Jr. and Jere Abbott, the future director and associate director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, respectively—who were on the Russian leg of a European tour designed as an education in contemporary artistic developments. The three met regularly, visiting exhibitions and the studios of Moscow-based artists. The fruits of this unlikely friendship between a radical art-world celebrity and two fledgling art historians were seen in Rivera's one-man show at MoMA in the winter of 1931–32, a blockbuster that decimated the young museum's existing attendance records. In support of the exhibition, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, a founding trustee of the Museum, purchased the sketches to help defray the cost of the artist's stay in New York. She donated the works to MoMA in 1935.

The authors use data from Wikipedia to build a graph visualization of the evolution of artistic styles inspired by Alfred H. Barr's poster for the 1936 Cubism & Abstract Art exhibition. Drawing from Wikipedia articles about persons and art styles, the authors construct a bi-partite network based on their mutual hyperlinks and assume relationships between styles if their respective articles are bridged by hyperlinks to and from person articles. The resulting visualization extends its model with respect to the number of covered styles, thus embedding it within a larger art-historical perspective as seen through the lens of Wikipedia.

Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism (1936), curated by Alfred H. Barr at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, was the first major exhibition of outsider art at the epicentre of the art world. The entrance of outsider art in the art museum coincided with the changing role of the curator: from a custodian of fine arts to an exhibition author with creative agency. The disconnection of outsider art from canonized art history and the peculiar appearance of the works and their makers inspired new curatorial narrations and settings. Barr’s inclusive vision of modern art and curation was, however, strongly criticized, and a few years later that vision was replaced by a hierarchical one demanding the exclusion of outsider art from the art museum. The developments at MoMA between 1936 and 1943 exemplify how outsider art served as a catalyst for the curatorial turn in which the division between the roles of curator and artist began to shift.

Die Moderne kommt aus Japan. Jedenfalls, wenn man dem Gründungsdirektor des New Yorker Museum of Modern Art Alfred H. Barre folgt, der auf dem vielleicht berühmtesten Schaubild der Kunstgeschichte die Moderne mit dem Jahr 1890 beginnen ließ und daneben kommentarlos notierte: «Japanese Prints». Japanische Kunst gilt nicht erst seit Barrs Entwicklungsgeschichte der abstrakten Kunst, die er 1936 skizzierte, als eine der wichtigsten Quellen der westlichen Moderne. Schon lange vor Barr hatten Kunstkritiker, -historiker und Künstler in der japanischen Kunst eine Tradition für die Moderne gesucht oder in ihr den ästhetischen Ausgleich für die Defizite der Modernisierung gefunden. Und bis heute ist Japan für unzählige Autoren das «Heimatland der Abstraktion», in dem, wie der japanische Maler Saburô Hasegawa 1940 schrieb, «schon vor 400 Jahren» verwirklicht wurde, was der Westen erst ind er Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts erproben sollte.

Right from its opening in 1929, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) recreated modern art as a new myth that was rescued from European history and thus became accessible as an independent value for an American audience. Paradoxically, the myth stemmed from the opinion that modern art’s history seemed to have expired in pre-war Europe. Upon MoMA’s completion of a major expansion project in 2004, there was considerable anticipation about how the museum would represent its own history and raise its profile in a new century. As it turned out, the museum opted for a surprisingly retrospective look, since its curators were tempted to exhibit its own collection, so unique up until the sixties, in the new exhibition halls. This launched a dilemma for MoMA, as it became a place for past art with little space for new art. In an in-depth analysis of what constitutes “modern” art in the context of the preeminent questions circulating in the art world during this time—When was modern art? and Where was modern art?—the author presents a focused chronology of the administration of MoMA under the museum’s first director, Alfred Hamilton Barr Jr. (1929–43), and, later, William Rubin, director of the Department of Painting and Sculpture (1968–88), with regard to their influence on the museum’s mission, exhibitions, and international profile. The author concludes with commentary on contemporary changes in art geography and contemplation on the effect on artists of the emergence of a global art market.

Barlow JW, Crowe TC, Cowen NL, Raggatt LE, Topliss DJ, Stockigt JR. Stimulation of sex hormone-binding globulin mRNA and attenuation of corticosteroid-binding globulin mRNA by triiodothyronine in human hepatoma cells. Eur J Endocrinol 1994;130:166–70. ISSN 0804–4643 We examined the time course and dose response of the triiodothyronine (T3) effect on mRNAs for sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) and corticosteroid-binding globulin (CBG) in cells of the human hepatoma line HepG2. After 7 h of exposure to a saturating dose of T3, SHBG mRNA was unchanged but increased to 1.5±0.1 times the unstimulated control at 22 h. Maximal stimulation (2.3±0.6) was observed at 2–3 days. Corticosteroid-binding globulin mRNA was unchanged for 22 h after exposure to T3 but diminished thereafter to 64% by day 3. At 3–4 days of exposure, the changes in both SHBG mRNA and CBG mRNA were dose-responsive to the T3 concentration. For both mRNAs, half-maximal response occurred between 10 and 20 pmol/l bioavailable T3. Cortisol-binding proteins secreted by HepG2 cells after 3 days in culture also were T3 dose-responsive. No re-uptake of secreted CBG by the cells was observed, suggesting that the T3 effect on CBG secretion occurs during production of the mature protein. These data suggest that T3 stimulates the expression of the SHBG gene and attenuates the expression of the CBG gene. The effects of T3 on these genes are consistent with the increase in circulating SHBG and decrease in circulating CBG observed in hyperthyroidism. The HepG2 cells may be a useful human cell line in which to study the diversity of the molecular mechanisms of T3 action. JW Barlow, Ewen Downie Metabolic Unit, Alfred Hospital, Commercial Rd. Melbourne, Victoria 3181, Australia

Introduction Nancy Thompson (Heather Langekamp) is one angry teenager. She’s just discovered that her mother Marge (Ronee Blakley) knows about Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), the strange man with the burnt flesh and the switchblade fingers who’s been killing her friends in their dreams. Marge insists that there’s nothing to worry about. “He’s dead, honey,” Marge assures her daughter, “because mommy killed him.” This now-famous line neatly encapsulates the gender politics of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). We argue that in order to fully understand how gender operates in Nightmare, it is useful to read the film within the context of the historical period in which it was produced. Nightmare appeared during the early years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Reagan valorised the white, middle-class nuclear family. Reagan’s presidency coincided with (and contributed to) the rise of ‘family values’ and a corresponding anti-feminism. During this era, both ‘family values’ and anti-feminism were being endorsed (and contested) in Hollywood cinema. In this article, we suggest that the kind of patriarchal family structure endorsed by Reagan is thoroughly ridiculed in Nightmare. The families in Craven’s film are dysfunctional jokes, headed by incompetent adults who, in their historical attempts to rid their community of Freddy, instead fostered Freddy’s growth from sadistic human to fully-fledged monster. Nancy does indeed slay the beast in order to save the children of Elm Street. In doing so, though, we suggest that she becomes both a maternal and paternal figure; and (at least symbolically) restores her fragmented nuclear family unit. Also, and tellingly, Nancy and her mother are punished for attempting to destroy Krueger. Nightmare in 1980s AmericaNightmare was released at the height of the popularity of the “slasher film” genre. Much scholarly attention has been given to Nightmare’s gender politics. Film theorist Carol Clover has called Nancy “the grittiest of the Final Girls” (202). Clover has used the term “Final Girl” to describe the female protagonist in slasher films who survives until the film’s ending, and who kills the monster. For Clover and other scholars, Nancy uses her physical and intellectual strength to combat Freddy; she is not the kind of passive heroine found in earlier slasher films such as 1974’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (see Christensen; Clover 202; Trencansky). We do not disagree entirely with this reading. Nevertheless, we suggest that it can be complicated by analysing Nightmare in the historical context in which it was produced. We agree with Rhonda Hammer and Douglas Kellner that “Hollywood films provide important insights into the psychological, socio-political, and ideological make-up of U.S. society at a given point in history” (109). This article adopts Hammer and Kellner’s analytic approach, which involves using “social realities and context to help situate and interpret key films” (109). By adopting this approach, we hope to suggest the importance of Craven’s film to the study of gender representations in 1980s Hollywood cinema. Nightmare is a 1980s film that has reached a particularly large audience; it was critically and commercially successful upon its release, and led to numerous sequels, a TV series, and a 2010 remake (Phillips 77).Significantly, Craven’s film was released three years after the Republican Ronald Reagan commenced his first term as President of the United States of America. Much has been written about the neoconservative policies and rhetoric issued by the Reagan administration (see, for example, Broussard; Tygiel). This neoconservatism encroached on all aspects of social life, including gender. According to Sara Evans: “Empowered by the Republican administration, conservatives relentlessly criticized women’s work outside the home, blocking most legislation designed to ameliorate the strains of work and family life while turning the blame for those very stresses back on feminism itself” (87). For Reagan, the nuclear family—and, more specifically, the white, middle-class nuclear family—was under threat; for example, divorce rates and single parent families had increased exponentially in the US between the 1960s and the 1980s (Popenoe 531-532). This was problematic because, as sociologist David Popenoe has argued, the nuclear family was “by far the best institution” in which to raise children (539). Popenoe approvingly cites the following passage from the National Commission on Children (1991): Substantial evidence suggests that the quality of life for many of America's children has declined. As the nation looks ahead to the twenty- first century, the fundamental challenge facing us is how to fashion responses that support and strengthen families as the once and future domain for raising children. (539)This emphasis on “family values” was shared by the Religious Right, which had been gaining political influence in North America since the late 1970s. The most famous early example of the Religious Right was the “Save Our Children” crusade. This crusade (which was led by Baptist singer Anita Bryant) protested a local gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida (Winner 184). Family values were also espoused by some commentators of a more liberal political persuasion. A prominent example is Tipper Gore, wife of Democrats senator Al Gore Jr., who (in 1985) became the chief spokesperson of the Parents’ Music Resource Center, an organisation that aimed “to inform parents about the pornographic content of some rock songs” (Chastagner 181). This organisation seemed to work on the assumption that parents know what is best for their children; and that it is parents’ moral duty to protect their children from social evils (in this case, sexually explicit popular culture). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the anti-feminism and the privileging of family values described above manifested in the Hollywood cinema of the 1980s. Susan Faludi has demonstrated how a selection of films released during that decade “struggle to make motherhood as alluring as possible,” and punish those female protagonists who are unwilling or unable to become mothers (163). Faludi does not mention slasher films, though it is telling that this genre —a genre that had its genesis in the early 1960s, with movies such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)—enjoyed considerable popularity during the 1980s. The slasher genre has been characterised by its graphic depictions of violence, particularly violence against women (Welsh). Many of the female victims in these films are shown to be sexually active prior to their murders, thus making these murders seem like punishment for their behaviour (Welsh). For example, in Nightmare, the character Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss) is killed by Freddy shortly after she has sex with her boyfriend. Our aim is not to suggest that Nightmare is automatically anti-feminist because it is a slasher film or because of the decade in which it was released. Craven’s film is actually resistant to any single and definitive reading, with its blurring of the boundaries between reality and fantasy, its blend of horror and dark humour, and its overall air of ambiguity. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Hollywood films of the 1980s contested Reaganite politics as much as they endorsed those politics; the cinema of that decade was not entirely right-leaning (Hammer and Kellner 107). Thus, our aim is to explore the extent to which Craven’s film contests and endorses the family values and the conservative gender politics that are described above. In particular, we focus on Nightmare’s representation of the nuclear family. As Sara Harwood argues, in 1980s Hollywood cinema, the nuclear family was frequently represented as a “fragile, threatened entity” (5). Within this “threatened entity”, parents (and particularly fathers) were regularly represented as being “highly problematic”, and unable to adequately protect their children (Harwood 1-2). Harwood argues this point with reference to films such as the hugely popular thriller Fatal Attraction (1987). Sarah Trencansky has noted that a recurring theme of the 1980s slasher film is “youth subjugated to an adult community that produces monsters” (Trencansky 68). Harwood and Trencansky’s insights are particularly relevant to our reading of Craven’s film, and its representation of the heroine’s family. Bad Parents and Broken FamiliesNightmare is set in white, middle-class suburbia. The families within this suburbia are, however, a long way from the idealised, comfortable nuclear family. The parents are unfeeling and uncaring—not to mention unhelpful to their teenage children. Nancy’s family is a case in point. Her parents are separated. Her policeman father Donald (John Saxon) is almost laughably unemotional; when Nancy asks him whether her boyfriend has been killed [by Freddy], he replies flatly: “Yeah. Apparently, he’s dead.” Nancy’s mother Marge is an alcoholic who installs bars on the windows of the family home in a bid to keep Nancy safe. Marge is unaware (or maybe she does not want to know) that the real danger lies in the collective unconscious of teenagers such as her daughter. Ironically, it is parents such as Marge who created the monster. Late in the film, Marge informs Nancy that Freddy was a child murderer who avoided a jail sentence due to legal technicality. A group of parents tracked Freddy down and set fire to him. This represents a particularly extreme version of parental protectiveness. Marge tries to assure Nancy that Freddy “can’t get you now”, but the execution of her friends while they sleep—not to mention Nancy’s own nocturnal encounters with the monster—suggest otherwise.Indeed, it is easy to read Freddy as a kind of monstrous doppelganger for the parents who killed him. After all, he is (like those parents) a murderous adult. David Kingsley has argued that Freddy can be read as a doppelganger for Donald, and there is evidence in the film to support this argument. For example, the mention of Freddy’s name is the only thing that can transform Donald’s perpetual stoic facial expression into a look of genuine concern. Donald himself never mentions Freddy, or even acknowledges his existence—even when the monster is in front of him, in one of the film’s several climaxes. There is a sense, then, that Freddy represents a dark, sadistic part of Donald that he is barely able to face—but also, that he is barely able to repress. Nancy as Final Girl and/or (Over-)Protective MotherIn her essay, Clover argues that to regard the Final Girl as a “feminist development” is “a particularly grotesque expression of wishful thinking. She is simply an agreed-upon fiction, and the male viewer's use of her as a vehicle for his own sadomasochistic fantasies” (214). This is too simplistic a reading, as is suggested by a close look at the character Nancy. As Clover herself puts it, Nancy has “the quality of the Final Girl's fight, and more generally to the qualities of character that enable her, of all the characters, to survive what has come to seem unsurvivable” (Clover 64). She possesses crucial knowledge about Freddy and his powers. Nancy is indeed subject to violence at Freddy’s hands, but she also takes responsibility for destroying him— and this is something that the male characters seem unable or unwilling to do. Those men who disregard her warnings to stay awake (her boyfriend Glen) or who are unable to hear them (her friend Rod, who is incarcerated for his girlfriend Tina’s murder) die violent deaths. Nightmare is shot largely from Nancy’s point-of-view. The viewer is thus encouraged to feel the fear and terror that she feels about the monster, and want her to succeed in killing him. Nevertheless, the character Nancy is not entirely pro-feminist. There is a sense in which she becomes “the proverbial parent she never had” (Christensen 37; emphasis in original). Nancy becomes the mother who warns the neighbourhood youngsters about the danger that they are facing, and comforts them (particularly Rod, whose cries of innocence go ignored). Nancy also becomes the tough upholder of justice who punishes the monster in a way her policeman father cannot (or will not). Thus, Nancy comes to embody both, distinctly gendered parental roles; the nuclear family is to some extent restored in her very being. She answers Anita Bryant’s call to ‘save our children’, only here the threat to children and families comes not from homosexuality (as Bryant had feared), but rather from a supernatural killer. In particular, parallels are drawn between Nancy and Marge. Marge admits that “a group of us parents” hunted out Freddy. Nevertheless, in saying that “mommy killed him”, she seems to take sole responsibility for his execution. Compare Marge’s behaviour with that of Donald, who never utters Freddy’s name. In one of the climaxes, Nancy herself sets fire to Freddy, before he can hurt any other youngsters. Thus, it is the mothers in Nightmare—both the “real” mother (Marge) and the symbolic mother (Nancy)—who are punished for killing the monster. In the film’s first climax, the burning Freddy races into Marge’s bedroom and kills her, before both monster and victim mysteriously vanish. In the second climax, Marge is yanked off the front porch and through the front door, by unseen hands that most likely belong to Krueger.In the film’s final climax, Nancy wakes to find that the whole film was just a dream; her friends and mother are alive. She remarks that the morning is ‘bright’; indeed, it appears a bit too bright, especially after the darkness and bloodshed of the night before. Nancy steps into a car with her friends, but the viewer notices something odd—the car’s colours (red, with green stripes) match the colours on Freddy’s shirt. The car drives off, against the will of its passengers, and presumably powered by the apparently dead (or is he dead? Was he ever truly dead? Was he just dreamed up? Is Nancy still dreaming now?) monster. Compare the fates of these women with that of Donald. In the first climax, he watches in horror as Freddy murders Marge, but does nothing to protect her. Donald does not appear in the final climax. The viewer is left to guess what happened to him. Most likely, Donald will continue to try and protect the local community as best (or as incompetently) he can, and turn a blind eye to the teenage and female suffering around him. Conclusion We have argued that a nuanced understanding of the gender politics at the heart of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street can be achieved by reading the film within the context of the historical period in which it was released. Nightmare is an example of a Hollywood film that manages (to some extent) to contest the anti-feminism and the emphasis on “family values” that characterised mid-1980s American political culture. In Nightmare, the nuclear family is reduced to a pathetic joke; the parents are hopeless, and the children are left to fend (sometimes unsuccessfully) for themselves. Nancy is genuinely assertive, and the young men around her pay the price for not heeding or hearing her warnings. Nonetheless, as we have also argued, Nancy becomes the mother and father she never had, and in doing so she (at least symbolically) restores her fractured nuclear family unit. In Craven’s film, the nuclear family might be down, but it’s not entirely out. Finally, while both Nancy and Marge might seem to destroy Freddy, the monster ultimately punishes these women for their crimes. References A Nightmare on Elm Street. Dir. Wes Craven. New Line Cinema, 1984.A Nightmare on Elm Street. Dir. Samuel Bayer. New Line Cinema, 2010. Broussard, James H. Ronald Reagan: Champion of Conservative America. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis, 2014. Christensen, Kyle. “The Final Girl versus Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema.” Studies in Popular Culture 34.1 (2011): 23-47. Chastagner, Claude. “The Parents’ Music Resource Center: From Information to Censorship”. Popular Music 1.2 (1999): 179-192.Clover, Carol. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film”. Representations 20 (1987): 187-228. Evans, Sara. “Feminism in the 1980s: Surviving the Backlash.” Living in the Eighties. Eds. Gil Troy and Vincent J. Cannato. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 85-97. Faludi, Susan. Backlash: The Undeclared War against Women. London: Vintage, 1991. Fatal Attraction. Dir. Adrian Lyne. Paramount Pictures, 1987. Hammer, Rhonda, and Douglas Kellner. “1984: Movies and Battles over Reganite Conservatism”. American Cinema of the 1980s: Themes and Variations. Ed. Stephen Prince. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2007. 107-125. Harwood, Sarah. Family Fictions: Representations of the Family in 1980s Hollywood Cinema. Hampshire and London: Macmillan Press, 1997. Kingsley, David. “Elm Street’s Gothic Roots: Unearthing Incest in Wes Craven’s 1984 Nightmare.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 41.3 (2013): 145-153. Phillips, Kendall R. Dark Directions: Romero, Craven, Carpenter, and the Modern Horror Film. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. Popenoe, David. “American Family Decline, 1960-1990: A Review and Appraisal.” Journal of Marriage and Family 55.3 (1993): 527-542.Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount Pictures, 1960.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Dir. Tobe Hooper. Bryanston Pictures, 1974.Trencansky, Sarah. “Final Girls and Terrible Youth: Transgression in 1980s Slasher Horror”. Journal of Popular Film and Television 29.2 (2001): 63-73. Tygiel, Jules. Ronald Reagan and the Triumph of American Conservatism. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006. Welsh, Andrew. “On the Perils of Living Dangerously in the Slasher Horror Film: Gender Differences in the Association between Sexual Activity and Survival.” Sex Roles 62 (2010): 762-773.Winner, Lauren F. “Reaganizing Religion: Changing Political and Cultural Norms among Evangelicals in Ronald Reagan’s America.” Living in the Eighties. Eds. Gil Troy and Vincent J. Cannato. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 181-198.

I was at Harry’s last night, ostensibly for a quick glass of wine. Instead it turned into a few over many hours and a rare experience of the “regular” identity. It was relatively quiet when I arrived and none of the owners were there. David [a regular] was DJing; we only vaguely acknowledged each other. He was playing great music though, and I was enjoying being there by myself for the first time in a while—looking about at other customers and trying to categorise them, and occasionally chatting to the girl next to me. My friend Angie came to join me about an hour later, and then Paul, a regular, arrived. He sat on my other side and alternated between talking to me, David [they are close friends], the staff, and other customers he knew who passed by. As the evening progressed a few more regulars arrived; the most “unconnected” regulars I can recall seeing at one time. We were sitting along the bar, making jokes about whether the manager for the evening would let us have a lock in. None of us thought so, however the joking seemed to engender a shared identity—that we were a collective of regulars, with specialised knowledge and expectations of privileges. Perhaps it only arose because we were faced with the possibility of having those privileges refused. Or because just for once there were more than one or two of us present. Evenings like that put the effort and pain of the work I put into gaining that identity into context. (Research note, 18 June 2011) Being a Harry’s Regular Harry’s is my favourite bar in my neighbourhood. It is a small wine bar, owned by three men in their late thirties and targeted at people like them; my gentrifying inner city neighbourhood’s 20 to 40 something urban middle class. Harry’s has seats along the bar, booths inside, and a courtyard out the back. The seating arrangements mean that larger groups tend to gather outside, groups of two to four spread around the location, and people by themselves, or in groups of two, tend to sit at the bar. I usually sit at the bar. Over the three or so years I’ve been patronising Harry’s I’ve developed quite an attachment to the place. It is somewhere I feel comfortable and secure, where I have met and continue to run into other neighbourhood residents, and that I approach with an openness as to how the evening may play out. The development of this attachment and sense of ease has been a cumulative process. The combination of a slow growing familiarity punctuated by particularly memorable evenings, such as the one described above, where heightened emotions coalesce into a reflexive recognition of identification and belonging. As a result I would describe myself as an irregular regular (Katovich and Reese 317). This is because whilst my patronage is sporadic, I have a regular’s expectation of recognition, as well as an awareness of the privileges and responsibilities that this identification brings. Similar processes of identification and attachment have been described in earlier ethnographic work on regulars within bars and cafes. These have described the ways that group identifications and broader cultural roles are continually renegotiated and reinforced through social interaction, and how physical and symbolic tools, such as business layout and décor, acquired knowledge, as well as non-regulars, are utilised in this process (Anderson 33–38; Katovich and Reese 324, 328, 330; Spradley and Mann 67, 69, 84). However the continuing shifts in the manner in which consumption practices shape our experiences of the urban environment (see for example Lloyd; Zukin), and of collective identification (see for example Cova, Kozinets and Shankar), suggest that ongoing investigation in this area would be fruitful. Accordingly, this paper extends this earlier work to consider the ways this kind of regular collective identification may manifest within consumption spaces in the contemporary Western inner city. In particular this research is interested in the implications for regular identification of the urban middle class’s use of consumption spaces for socialising, and the ways this can construct social realms. These realms are not fixed within physical pieces of space, and are instead dependent on the density and proportions of the relationship types that are present (Lofland 11). Whilst recognising, as per Ash Amin (“Collective Culture and Urban Public Space” 8), that physical and symbolic elements also shape our experiences of collective identification in public spaces, this paper focuses specifically on these social elements. This is not only because it is social recognition that is at the heart of regular identification, but more significantly, because the layers of meaning that social realms produce are continually shifting with the ebb and flow of people within these spaces, potentially complicating the identification process. Understanding how these shifting social realms are experienced, and may aid or undermine identification, is thus an important aspect of understanding how regular collective identification may be experienced in the contemporary city, and the key aim of this paper. To do so, this paper draws on autoethnographic research of my consumption experiences within an Australian inner city neighbourhood, conducted from September 2009 to September 2010. Through this autoethnography I sought to explore the ways consumption spaces can support experiences of place-based community, with a particular interest in the emotional and imaginative aspects of this process. The research data drawn on here comes from detailed research memos that recorded my interactions, identifications and emotional responses within these spaces. For this paper I focus specifically on my experiences of becoming a regular at Harry’s as a means of exploring regular identification in the contemporary inner city. The Shapes of Third Places in Contemporary Inner City Harry’s could be described as my third place. This term has been used to describe public locations outside of home and work that are host to regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals (Oldenburg 16). These regular’s bars and locals cafés have been celebrated in research and popular culture for their perceived ability to facilitate “that easier version of friendship and congeniality that results from casual and informal affiliation” (Oldenburg 65). They are said to achieve this by offering accessible, neutral spaces, where worries and inequalities are left at the door, and spirited, playful conversation is the focus of activity (Oldenburg 25, 29, 32). This is the idealised place “where everybody knows your name.” Despite the undeniable appeal of the third place concept, these types of social and inclusive consumption spaces are more likely to be seen on television, or in property development marketing, than on the shopping streets of our neighbourhoods. Instead many consumption spaces are purely that; spaces in which individual’s consume goods and services in ways that can encourage individualism, segregation, and stifle interaction. This has been attributed to a range of factors, including planning systems that encourage single use zoning, a reliance on cars limiting our use of public places, and the proliferation of shopping centres that focus on individualised consumption and manufactured experiences (Lofland 145, 205, 218; Oldenburg 61). In addition, the fundamentals of running a successful business can also work against a consumption space’s accessibility and neutrality. This is because location, décor, product offering, pricing, competition, and advertising practices all physically and symbolically communicate a desired target audience and expected behaviour patterns that can implicitly shape customer interactions, and the meanings we attach to them (Bitner 61; Sherry 4). More subtlety, the changing lifestyle preferences of residents of gentrifying neighbourhoods such as mine, may also work as a barrier to the development of third places. Research tells us that the urban middle class is a demographic which engages in a broad range of lifestyle-based consumption activities for socialising purposes and as part of their identity construction (Lloyd 122; Zukin 7). However this is also a demographic that is said to be increasingly mobile, and thus less restricted by geographic boundaries, such as of the neighbourhood they live in (Amin, “Re-Thinking the Urban Social” 107). As I noted above, it was not often that I experienced a critical mass of regulars at Harry’s, indeed I rarely expected to. This is because whilst Harry’s target demographic would seem likely candidates for becoming regular café or bar customers, they are also likely to be socialising in a number of different cafés, bars, and restaurants across a number of different neighbourhoods in my city, thus reducing the frequency of their presence within any one particular location. Finally, even those consumption spaces that do support social interaction may still not be operating as third places. This is because this sociality can alter a space’s level of openness, through the realms that it constructs (Lofland 11). Lofland (14) describes three types of social realms: public, parochial, and private. Private realms are dominated by intimate relations, parochial realms by communal relations, and the public realm by relations with people who are only categorically known. According to this classification, the regular’s café or bar is primarily operating as a parochial realm, identifiable by the shared sense of commonality that defines the regular collective. However naming the regular identification of the third place as the product of a social realm also highlights its fragility, and suggests that instead of being reliable and able to be anticipated, that the collective identification such spaces offers is uncertain, and easily disrupted by the shifts in patronage and patterns of interaction that consumption based socialising can bring. This is fluidity is articulated in the work of Veronique Aubert-Gamet and Bernard Cova, who describe two ways consumption spaces can support public collective identification; as anchoring and exposure sites. Anchoring sites are those within which an established collective gathers to interact and reinforce their shared identity (Aubert-Gamet and Cova 40). These are parochial realms in their more closed form, and are perhaps most likely to offer the certainty of the happily anticipated gathering that Ray Oldenburg describes. However because of this they are also more likely to be exclusionary. This is because anchoring can limit collective identification to those who are recognised as community members, thus undermining the potential for openness. This openness is instead found within exposure sites, in which individuals are able to observe and engage with the identification practices of others at limited risk (Aubert-Gamet and Cova 41). This is not quite the anomie of the public street, but neither is it the security of anchoring or the third place. This is because exposure realms can offer both familiarity, such as through the stability of physical setting, and strangeness, through the transience of customers and relationships. Furthermore, by hovering at the ever shifting boundary of parochial and public realms, these moments of exposure may offer the potential for the type of spontaneous conviviality that has been proposed as the basis for fleeting collective identifications (Amin, “Collective Culture and Urban Public Space” 10; Maffesoli). That is, it may be that when a potential third place is dominated by an exposure realm, it is experienced as open and accessible, whereas when an anchoring realm dominates, the security of collective identification takes precedence. It is the potential of social interaction at the boundaries of these realms and the ways it shapes regular identification that is of interest to this paper. This is because it is in this shifting space that identifications themselves are most fluid, unpredictable, and thus open to opportunistic breaches in the patterns of interaction. This unpredictability, and the interaction strategies we adopt to negotiate it, may also suggest ways in which a certain kind of third place experience can be developed and maintained in the contemporary inner city, where consumption based socialising is high, but where people are also mobile and less tied into fixed patterns of patronage. The remainder of the paper draws on my experiences of regular identification in Harry’s to consider how this might work. Becoming a Harry’s Regular: Anchoring and the Regular Collective The Harry’s regular collective is formed from a loose social network of neighbourhood residents, variably connected through long established friendships and more recently established consumption space based acquaintances. Evenings such as the one described above work to reinforce that shared identity and the specialised knowledge that underpins it; of the quirks of the owners and staff, of our privileges and responsibilities as regulars, and of the shared cultural identity that reflects a specific aspect of the gentrifying neighbourhood in which we live. However, achieving this level of identification and belonging has not been not easy. Whilst Oldenburg suggests that to establish third place membership one mainly just turns up regularly and tries not to be obnoxious (35), my experience instead suggests it’s a slightly more complicated, and emotional process, that is not always positive. My research notes indicate that discontent, worry, and shame, were as much a feature of my interactions in Harry’s, as were moments of joy, excitement, or an optimistic feeling of connection. This paper suggests that these negative experiences often stemmed from the confusion created by the shifting realms of interaction that occurred within the bar. This is because whilst Harry’s appeared to be a regular’s bar, it more often operated as an anchoring realm for a social network linked to the owners. Many of Harry’s regulars were established friends of the owners, and their shared identity definition appeared to be based on those primary ties. Whilst over time I became acquainted with some of this social network through my patronage, their dominance of the regular group had important implications for the collective identification I was trying to achieve. It created a realm that appeared to be parochial, but often became private, through simple acts such as the arrival of additional social network members, or a staff member shifting their orientation to another, from regular customer to friend. One consequence of these shifting realms was that my perceived inability to penetrate this anchored social network led me to doubt the value and presence of a broader consumption space based regular collective. The boundaries between private, parochial, and public appeared rigid, with no potential for cumulative impacts from fleeting connections in the public realm. It also made me question my motives regarding this desire to identify as suggested here: Thinking about tonight and Kevin [an owner] and Lucas [staff member] and introductions and realising I feel a bit let down/disappointed about the lack of something from them. But I realise also that is because I am wanting something more from them than the superficial I keep on going on about. I want recognition, as a person worth knowing. And that is perhaps where the thing of doing it by yourself falls down. I have an emotional investment in it. … Linking back to my previous thoughts about being able to be placed within a social network—having that emotional certainty of being able to be identified as part of a specific social network would reinforce to ME, who I am within this place. That I had some kind of identifiable position—which is not about superficial connections at all—it’s about recognisable strong ties. (Research note, 2 February 2009) As this excerpt suggests, I struggled to appreciate the identification within my interactions in Harry’s, because I had difficulty separating my emotional need for recognition from the implication that a lack of acknowledgement beyond the superficial I theoretically expected was a social rejection. That is, I had difficulty negotiating the boundary between the parochial realm of the regular collective, and its manifestation as a more closed private realm for the anchored social network. I expected regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings (Oldenburg 16), instead what I got was the brief hellos and limited yet enjoyable conversations that mark the sociality of public collective identifications. It could be suggested that what I also failed to grasp here is the difference between regularity as collective and as an individual identification. It is the collective identity that is reinforced in the parochial realm, as is evident in the description that opened this paper, and yet what I hoped for was recognition as an individual, “a person worth knowing.” However as the following section will suggest, the regular identity can also be experienced, and actively embraced, as an individual identity within realms of exposure. And it is through this version of the regular identity, that this paper suggests that some kind of personal recognition is able to be achieved. Becoming a Harry’s Regular: Exposing the Regular as Individual Given the level of comfort and connection expressed within the research excerpt that opened this paper, it is clear that I overcame the uncertainty described in the previous section, and was able to establish myself within the Harry’s regular collective. This is despite, as noted above, that both the presence and openness of Harry’s regular collective was unpredictable. However, this uncertainty also created a tension that could be said to positively increase the openness of the space. This is because it challenged the predictability that can be associated with anchored regularity, and instead forced me to look outside that identity for those reliable moments of easy friendship and congeniality within realms of exposure. That is, because of the uncertainty regarding both the presence and openness of established regulars, I often turned to fleeting interactions with non-regulars to generate that sense of identification. The influence of non-regulars can be downplayed in ethnographies of cafes and bars, perhaps because they tend to be excluded from the primary group’s identifications that are being investigated. Michael Katovich and William Reese provide the most detailed description of their relevance to the regular identity when they describe how the non-regulars in the Big Derby Lounge were used as tools against which established regulars compared their position and standing, as well as being a potential pool of recruits (336). This paper argues that non-regulars are also significant because their presence alters the realms operating within the space, thus creating opportunities for interactions at those boundaries that can be identity defining. My interactions with non-regulars in Harry’s generally offered the opportunity for spirited, playful and at times quite involved conversations, in which acquired knowledge, familiarity with staff or products, or simple statements of attachment were sufficient markers to establish an experience of regular identification in the eyes of the other. Whilst at times the density of these strangers altered Harry’s realms to the extent I did not feel at home at all, they nonetheless provided an avenue through which to remedy the uncertainties created by my interactions with the anchored social network. These non-regular interactions were able to do this because they operated at the low emotional involvement but high emotional gain boundary between fleeting public realm relations, and more meaningful experiences of exposure, where shared values and identities are on display. That is, I was confirming my regular identity not through an experience of the regular collective, but through an experience of being an individual and a regular. And in each successful encounter there was also the affirmation I had unsuccessfully sought through the regular collective, the emotional certainty that I had some kind of identifiable position within that place. Conclusion: Anchoring and Exposing in the Third Place This paper has drawn from my experiences in Harry’s to explore the process of regular identification as it operates at the boundaries of social realms. This focus provides a means to explore the ways that regular collective identification may develop in the contemporary inner city, where regularity can be sporadic and consumption based socialising is common. Drawing on autoethnographic work, this paper suggests that regularity is experienced both as an individual and a collective identity, according to the nature of the realms operating within the space. Collective identification occurs in anchoring realms, and supports the established regular group, whereas individual regular identification occurs within exposure realms, and relies on recognition from willing non-regulars. Furthermore, this paper suggests it is the latter of these identifications that is the more easily achieved, because it can be experienced at the exposure boundaries of the parochial realm, a less risky and more accessible place to identify when patronage is infrequent and social realms so fluid. It is this use of non-regular relations to balance the emotional work involved in the development of anchored relationships that I believe points to the true potential of third places in the contemporary inner city. Establishing a place where everybody knows your name is improbable in this context. However encouraging consumption spaces in which an individual’s regular patronage can form the basis of an identification, from which one can both anchor and expose, may ultimately work to support a kind of contemporary inner city version of the easier friendship and congeniality that the third place is hoped to offer. References Amin, Ash. “Collective Culture and Urban Public Space.” City 12.1 (2008): 5–24. ———. “Re-Thinking the Urban Social.” City 11.1 (2007): 100–14. Anderson, Elijah. A Place on the Corner. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978. Aubert-Gamet, Veronique, and Bernard Cova. “Servicescapes: From Modern Non-Places to Postmodern Common Places.” Journal of Business Research 44 (1999): 37–45. Bitner, Mary Jo. “Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees.” Journal of Marketing 56 (Apr. 1992): 57–71. Cova, Bernard, Robert V. Kozinets, and Avi Shankar. Eds. Consumer Tribes, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007. Katovich, Michael A., and William A. Reese II. “The Regular: Full-Time Identities and Memberships in an Urban Bar.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 16.3 (1987): 308–43. Lloyd, Richard. Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Post-Industrial City. New York: Routledge, 2006. Lofland, Lyn H. The Public Realm: Exploring the City's Quintessential Social Territory. Hawthorne, New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1998. Maffesoli, Michel. The Times of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. Trans. Don Smith. London: Sage, 1996. Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes. Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. New York: Marlowe and Company, 1999. Sherry, John F., Jr. “Understanding Markets as Places: An Introduction to Servicescapes.” Servicescapes: The Concept of Place in Contemporary Markets. Ed. John F. Sherry, Jr. Chicago: NTC Business Books, 1998. 1–24. Spradley, James P., and Barbara J. Mann. The Cocktail Waitress: Woman’s Work in a Man’s World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. Zukin, Sharon. Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. New York: Oxford UP, 2010.

Introduction Contrary to popular understandings of academia, the work of academics is intrinsically community driven, because scholarly inquiry is invariably about social life. Therefore, what occupies academic scholarship is in the interest of the broader populace, and we rely on the public to inform our work. The findings of academic work are simultaneously a reflection of the researcher, and the public. The research interests of contemporary cultural and social researchers inevitably, and often necessarily, reflect issues and activities that they encounter in their everyday lives. My own doctoral research into contemporary cultural discourses informing the expectations, and experiences of motherhood in regional Western Australia, reflects an academic, personal and community interest. The doctoral research drawn on in this paper, stresses the relevance of cultural research projects to the concerns and behaviours of the wider public. The enthusiasm with which participants responded to this project, and reported back about their feelings and actions following the interview was unexpected. The immediacy of the impact this project has had on assisting women to create and consider alternate discourses demonstrates the capacity of this work to inform and direct contemporary social, political and cultural debates surrounding the bodily expectations, and experiences of motherhood. The feminist inspired methodology adopted in this project facilitated my speaking to other women negotiating cultural ideals about what constitutes a "good mother" in contemporary regional Western Australia. It has the potential to open up conversations between women, and between women and men, as evidenced by subsequent responses from participants. By examining the impact of these cultural ideals with everyday women, this project provides a means for women, and men, to reflect, engage critically and ultimately re-shape these discourses to more accurately reveal the desires and aspirations of everyday Australian women. From my perspective, three discourses in particular, the Good Mother, the Superwoman, and the Yummy Mummy, inform the expectations and experiences of motherhood. The orthodox discourse of the 'Good Mother' understands motherhood as a natural feminine desire and it describes characteristics such as enduring love, care, patience and selflessness that are often presented as synonymous with motherhood. Women who can successfully juggle the expectations of being a 'good mother' and a dedicated professional worker, are 'superwomen'. Increasingly dominant is the expectation that following maternity, women should not look as if they have had a child at all; the discourse of the Yummy Mummy focused on in this paper. The relationships between these discourses are complex; "failure to perform" them adequately can result in women being labelled "bad mothers", either by themselves or others. Although these discourses are Western and globalising, they have a tangible effect locally. The cultural scripts they proscribe to are often contradictory; resulting in many women feeling conflicted. Despite some levels of critical engagement with these competing cultural agendas, the women in this study reflected, to differing degrees, their internalisation of the expectations that accompany these cultural scripts. The outcome of this work, and the process of producing it, has the capacity to influence the direction of current debates in Australia. Amongst others, the debate surrounding the contemporary cultural "presentation" of postnatal bodies, including what women should look like as mothers. The role of the media in shaping the current expectations surrounding the postnatal body, including the recently raised proposal that glossy magazines, and other forms of media, should have to declare incidences of Photoshopping, or other forms of photo enhancement, is one agenda that this project can influence. I explore the potential of this work to influence these debates through an examination of the impact of popularised fantasies on women's subjectivity, and feelings towards their postnatal bodies. An examination of the ways that some aspects of mothering are excluded from popular media sources highlights the capacity of this work to provide a practical means of sharing contemporary expectations and experiences of motherhood amongst women, those already mothering, and those intending to mother, and men. These debates have an impact on, and relevance for, the everyday lives of Australian women and men. Feminist Methodologies: Opportunities to Foster Mutual Understanding and Recognition of Shared Experience The motivating emphasis of feminist research is "women's lives and the questions they have about their own experiences" (Bloom 112). Consequently, a feminist methodology includes a concern with transformation and empowerment through the research practice (McRobbie, "Politics" 52). For Luff this reminds feminist researchers that their first duty is to "deal respectively with women's subjectivity, and indeed the inter-subjectivities of researcher and participants" (692). Olesen, in her account of feminist qualitative research, articulates that: the researcher too, has attributes, characteristics, a history, and gender, class, race and social attributes that enter the researcher interaction … in light of the multiple positions, selves, and identities at play in the research process, the subjectivity of the researcher, as much as that of the researched, became foregrounded. (226-7) This signifies for Olesen the indistinct boundary between researchers and researched (227), and for myself, signals the potential that feminist research praxis has for uniting the academic and broader, communities. According to Reinharz the interview has historically been the principle way in which feminists have pursued the active contribution of their participants in the construction of their research projects (Heyl 374). The research findings of this doctoral project are based on a series of interviews with nine intending to mother women, and twenty one already mothering women. The research questions were open-ended to allow participants to answer "in their own terms" (Jones 48). Participants were also encouraged to reflect on aspects of mothering, or plans to mother, that were most significant to them. Following Oakley (49) and others (Bloom 11) argument that there can be no intimacy between researcher and participant without reciprocity, while I chose not to express my personal disagreement to any statements made by participants, I self-consciously chose to answer any questions that participants directed to me. I did not attempt to hide my personal empathy with many of their accounts, and allowed for email follow up. By doing my upmost to position myself as a "validating listener" rather than a scrutinising judge, I allowed the women to reflect on the fact that their feelings were not necessarily unusual or "abnormal", and did not make them "bad mothers". In this way, both the process, and the final product of this work can provide a practical means for women to share some of their feelings, which are often excluded, or in some cases, vilified (Arendell 1196; O'Donohoe 14), in popular media outlets. The outcome of this work can contribute to an alternate space for everyday women to "be real" with both other mothers, and intending to mother women, and contribute to discourses of motherhood. Unreal Imagery and the Postnatal Body: Possibilities for Communication and Alteration Drawing on the principal example of the impact of unreal imagery, specifically images of airbrushed supermodels and celebrities, on the real experiences of motherhood by everyday Australian women, I propose that this project can foster further communications between intending to mother, and already mothering women, and their partners, about the realities, and misconceptions of motherhood; particularly, to share aspects of mothering that are excluded or marginalised in popular media representations. Through this process of validating the experiences of "real" everyday women, women, and men, can affect a break from, or at least critique, dominant discourses surrounding motherhood, and appreciate that there are a multiplicity of opinions, information, and ways of mothering. A dominant aspect of the "unreal" surrounding motherhood concerns the body and what women are led to believe their bodies can, and indeed, should, look like, postnatal. Unsurprisingly, the women in my study associated this "unreal" with Hollywood representations, and the increasing plethora of celebrity mums they encounter in the media. As McRobbie has suggested, a popular front page image for various celebrity chasing weekly magazines is the Yummy Mummy, "who can squeeze into size six jeans a couple of weeks after giving birth, with the help of a personal trainer", an image that has provided the perfect foundation for marketing companies to promote the arena of maternity as the next central cultural performance in terms of femininity, in which "high maintenance pampering techniques, as well as a designer wardrobe" ("Yummy") are essential. The majority of women in my study spoke about these images, and the messages they send. With few exceptions, the participants identified popular images surrounding mothering, and the expectations that accompany them, as unrealistic, and inaccurate. Several women reflected on the way that some aspects of their experience, which, in many cases, turned out to be shared experience, of mothering are excluded, or "hidden away", in popular media forms. For Rachel, popular media representations do not capture the "realness" of everyday experiences of motherhood: I was looking at all these not so real people … Miranda Kerr like breast feeding with her red stiletto's on and her red lipstick and I'm just like right you've got your slippers on and your pyjamas on and you're lucky to brush your teeth by lunchtime … I don't think they want to keep it real … It's not all giggles and smiles; there is uncontrollable crying in the middle of the night because you don't know what's wrong with them and you find out the next day that they've got an ear infection. You know where's all that, they miss out all that, it's all about the beautiful sleeping babies and you know the glam mums. (Rachel, aged 33, mother of one) The individual women involved in this study were personally implicated to differing degrees in these unreal images. For Penelope, these types of representations influenced her bodily expectations, and she identified this disjunction as the most significant in her mothering experience: I expected to pop straight back into my pre-maternity size, that for me was the hugest thing actually, like you see these ladies who six weeks after they've had their baby, look as good as before sort of thing, no stretch marks or anything like and then I thought if they can do it, I can do it sort of thing and it didn't work like that. (Penelope, aged 36, mother of four) Penelope's experience was not an unusual one, with the majority of women reporting similar feelings. The findings of this study concur with the outcomes reported by a recent United Kingdom survey of 2000 women, which found that 82 per cent were unhappy with their postnatal bodies, 77 per cent were "shocked by the changes to their body", and, more than nine out of ten agreed that "celebrity mothers' dramatic weight loss 'puts immense and unwelcome pressure on ordinary mums" (O'Donohoe 9). This suggests that celebrity images, and the expectations that accompany them, are having a widespread effect in the Western world, resulting in many women experiencing a sense of loss when it comes to their bodies. They must "get their bodies back", and may experience shame over the unattainability of this goal, which appears to be readily achievable for other women. To appreciate the implications of these images, and the power relations involved, these effects need to be examined on the local, everyday level. O'Donohoe discusses the role of magazines in funding this unreal imagery, and their fixation on high-profile Yummy Mummies, describing their coverage as "hyper-hypocritical" (9-10). On one hand, they play a leading role in the proliferation, promotion and reinforcement of the Yummy Mummy ideal, and the significant pressure this discourse places on women in the wider community. Whilst on the other hand they denigrate and vilify celebrity mums who are also increasingly pressured into this performance, labelling them as "weigh too thin" (cover of Famous magazine, Jan. 2011) and "too stressed to eat" (cover of OK magazine, June 2011). Gill and Arthurs observe how: the female celebrity body is under constant surveillance, policed for being too fat, too thin, having wrinkles or 'ugly hands' … 'ordinary' women's bodies are under similar scrutiny when they participate in the growing number of reality make-over shows in which … female participants are frequently humiliated and vilified. (444) An observation by one of my participants suggests the implications of these media trends on the lives of everyday women, and suggests that everyday women are inscrutably aware of the lack of alternative discourses: It's kind of like fashionable to talk about your body and what's wrong with it, it's not really, I don't know. You don't really say, check out, like god I've got good boobs and look at me, look how good I look. It's almost like, my boobs are sagging, or my bums too big, it's never anything really positive. (Daisy, aged 36, mother of two) The "fashionable" nature of body surveillance is further supported by the vast majority of women in this study who reported such behaviour. A preoccupation with the body as a source of identity that emphasises self-surveillance, self-monitoring, and self-discipline (Gill 155) is a central component to neoliberalism, and the Yummy Mummy phenomenon. As O'Donohoe surmises, maternity now requires high maintenance (3). O'Donohoe comments on the concern this generates amongst some women regarding their weight gain, leading to some cases of infant malnutrition as a consequence of dieting whilst pregnant (9). Whilst this is an extreme example, mothering women's anxiety over body image is a widespread concern as reflected in this study. This trend towards body surveillance suggests that the type of sexualisation Attwood describes as taking place in Western cultures, is present and influential amongst the women in this study. I concur with Attwood that this trend is supplementary to the intensification of neoliberalism, in which "the individual becomes a self-regulating unit in society" (xxiii). The body as a key site for identity construction, acts as a canvas, on which the cultural trend towards increasing sexualisation, is printed, and has implications for both feminine and maternal identities. The women in this study reported high incidences of body self-surveillance, with an emphasis on the monitoring of "weight". For many women, the disjuncture between the popularised "unreal", and the reality of their postnatal bodies resulted in feelings of shock and disappointment. For Teal, positive feelings and self-esteem were connected to her weight, and she discussed how she had to restrict weighing herself to once a week, at a particular time of day, to avoid distress: I'm trying to make it that I don't go on the scales, just once and week and like in the morning, because like I go at different times and like your weight does change a little bit during the day and your oh my goodness I've put on kilo! And feel awful and then next morning you weigh yourself and go good its back. (Teal, aged 25, mother of one) According to Foucault (Sawicki, Disciplining 68), the practice of self-surveillance teaches individuals to monitor themselves, and is one of the key normative operations of biopower, a process that attaches individuals to their identities. The habitual approach to weight monitoring by many of the women in this study suggests that the Yummy Mummy discourse is becoming incorporated into the identities of everyday mothering women, as a recognisable and dominant cultural script to perform, to differing degrees, and to varying grades of consciousness. A number of participants in this study worked in the fitness industry, and whilst I expected them to be more concerned about their bodies postnatal, because of the pressures they face in their workplaces to "look the part", the education they receive about their bodies gave them a realistic idea of what individual women can achieve, and they were among the most critical of weight monitoring practices. As several feminist and poststructuralist theorists suggest, disciplinary practices, such as self-surveillance, both underscore, and contribute to, contemporary cultural definitions of femininity. From a Foucauldian perspective, a woman in this context becomes "a self-policing subject, self-committed to a relentless self-surveillance" (Hekman 275). However, although for Foucault, total liberation is impossible, some parts of social life are more vulnerable to criticism than others, and we can change particular normalising practices (165). Creating alternate mothering discourses is one way to achieve this, and some women did reflect critically on these types of self-policing behaviours. A minority of women in this study recognised their body as "different" to before they had children. Rather than agonise over these changes, they accepted them as part of where they are in their lives right now: I'm not the same person that I was then, its different, I like I just sort of feel that change is good, it's okay to be different, it's okay for me look different, it's okay for my body to kind of wear my motherhood badges that's okay I feel happy about that. So I don't want it to look exactly the same, no I don't actually. (Corinne, aged 33, mother of four) As many of the women who have been in email contact with me since their interviews have expressed, the questions I asked have prompted them to reflect more consciously on many of these issues, and for some, to have conversations with loved ones. For me, this demonstrates that this project has assisted women, and the process of taking part has elicited conversations between more women, and importantly, between women and men, about these types of media representations, and the expectations they create. In response to a growing body of research into the effects of unrealistic imagery on women, particularly young women and the increasing rates of eating disorders amongst women (see for example Hudson et al.; Taylor et al.; Treasure) in Western communities, there has been debate in a number of Western countries, including the United Kingdom, France and Australia, over whether the practice of digitally altering photos in the media, should be legislated so that media outlets are required to declare when and how images have been altered. The media has not greeted this suggestion warmly. In response to calls for legislative action Jill Wanless, an associate editor at Look magazine, suggested that "sometimes readers want hyper-reality in a way—they want to be taken out of their own situation". The justification for "perfected" images, in this case, is the inferred distinction they create between the unreal and reality. However, the responses from the everyday women involved in this study suggest that their desire is not for "hyper reality", but rather for "realness" to be represented. As Corinne explains: Where's the mother on the front page of the magazine that says I took 11 months to lose my baby weight…I hate this fantasy world, where's the reality, where's our real mums, our real women who are out there going I agonise over dropping my kid in day care everyday when they cry, I hate it. That's real. Performativity, as an inextricable aspect of hyper reality, may be ignored by those with a vested interest in media production, but the roles that discourses such as the Yummy Mummy have in proliferating and creating the expectation of these performances, is of interest to both the community and cultural theorists. Conclusion The capacity to influence current cultural, political and social debates surrounding what women should look like as mothers in contemporary Western Australian society is important to explore. Using feminist methodologies in such work provides an opportunity to unite the academic and broader communities. By disassembling the boundary between researcher and researched, it is possible to encourage mutual understanding and the recognition of mutual experience amongst researcher, participants' and the wider community. Taking part in this research has elicited conversations between women, and men concerning their expectations, and experiences of parenthood. Most importantly, the outcome of this work has reflected a desire by local everyday women for the media to include their stories in the broader presentation of motherhood. In this sense, this project has, and can further, assist women in sharing aspects of their experiences that are frequently excluded from popular media representations, and present the multiplicity of mothering experiences, and what being a "good mother" can entail. Acknowledgements I would like to sincerely thank the following for their invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this article: Dr Kathryn Trees, Yann Toussaint, Linda Warren and the anonymous M/C Journal reviewers. References Arendell, Terry. "Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade's Scholarship." Journal of Marriage and the Family 62.4 (2000): 1192-207. Attwood, Feona. Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualisation of Western Culture. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. Bloom, Leslie. "Reflections from the Field: Locked in Uneasy Sisterhood: Reflections on Feminist Methodology and Research Relations." Anthropology & Education Quarterly 28.1 (1997): 111-22. Wanless, Jill. "Curb Airbrushed Images, Keep Bodies Real." CBS News World UK, 2010. 20 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/20/world/main6884884.shtml›. Gill, Rosalind. Gender and the Media. Cambridge: Polity P, 2007. Gill, Rosalind, and Jane Arthurs. "Editors Introduction: New Femininities?" Feminist Media Studies 6.4 (2006): 443-51. Hekman, Susan. Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1996. Heyl, Barbara Sherman. "Ethnographic Interviewing." Handbook of Ethnography. Eds. Paul Atkinson, Amanda J. Coffey, Sara Delamont, John Lofland, and Lyn H. Lofland. London: Sage, 2001. 369-83. Hudson, James I., Eva Hiripi, Harrison G. Pope Jr., and Ronald C. Kessler. "The Prevalence and Correlates of Eating Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication." Biological Psychiatry 61.3 (2007). 348-58. Jones, Sue. "Depth Interviewing." Applied Qualitative Research. Ed. Robert Walker. Ashgate, 1985. 45-56. Luff, Donna. "Dialogue across the Divides: 'Moments of Rapport' and Power in Feminist Research with Anti-Feminist Women." Sociology 33.4 (1999): 687-703. McRobbie, Angela. "The Politics of Feminist Research: Between Talk, Text and Action." Feminist Review 12 (1982): 46-57. ———. "Yummy Mummies Leave a Bad Taste for Young Women: The Cult of Celebrity Motherhood Is Deterring Couples from Having Children Early. We Need to Rethink the Nanny Culture." The Guardian 2 Mar. 2006. Oakley, Ann. "Interviewing Women: A Contradiction in Terms." Doing Feminist Research. Ed. Helen Roberts. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 30-61. O'Donohoe, Stephanie. "Yummy Mummies: The Clamour of Glamour in Advertising to Mothers." Advertising & Society Review 7.3 (2006): 1-18. Olesen, Virginia. "Feminisms and Qualitative Research at and into the Millennium." Handbook of Qualitative Research. Eds. Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln. London: Sage, 2000. 215-55. Sawicki, Jana. Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power, and the Body. New York: Routledge, 1991. ———. "Feminism, Foucault, and 'Subjects' of Power and Freedom." Feminist Interpretations of Michel Foucault. Ed. Susan J. Hekman, University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1996. 159-210. Taylor, C. Barr, et al. "The Adverse Effect of Negative Comments about Weight and Shape for Family and Siblings on Women at High Risk for Eating Disorders." Paediatrics 118 (2006): 731-38. Treasure, Janet. "An Image Is Worth a Thousand Words of Public Health." Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry 56.1 (2007): 7-8.