The thin line between desirably plump and overweight: detail from Rubens' The Arrival of Maria de' Medici at Marseille © Wikipedia

Not ‘fit for child-bearing’: Fatness and (In)fertility

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According to the UK’s National Health System, ‘Being overweight or obese’ is considered a risk factor for infertility. Pregnant people who are fat are often told about higher risks of complications during pregnancy and may have their birth choices limited due to their size. The fat acceptance movement have shown how fraught the relationship between health systems and fat, pregnant bodies health can be, and how pervasive and harmful fat shaming is. Unfortunately, it is also an issue that overweight people have dealt with for millennia.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth (John Singer Sargent, 1889) © Tate

(Un)sexing, Violence, and Women

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As she finds out the witches’ prophecy about Macbeth being crowned king and the current king’s imminent visit to their home, Lady Macbeth invokes evil spirits to help her be rid of her feminine qualities so that, together with Macbeth, she can murder the king:

British photographer Natalie Lennard’s rendition of Mary’s labour (The Creation of Man: Copyright © Natalie Lennard / Miss Aniela Ltd 2017).

‘Before she was in labour, she gave birth’

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As Christmas approaches, we are bombarded with images of the birth of Jesus Christ – or rather, with depictions of mother and child after the delivery. Indeed, while there are modern reimaginings of what this scene might have looked like, there are few earlier representations of Mary’s labour. How might that scene have looked? How did people conceptualise Jesus’ birth …

‘…but the Art of Midwifry chiefly concern us’!

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In her 1671 midwifery manual, the English midwife Jane Sharp defined the art of midwifery as ‘doubtless one of the most useful and necessary of all Arts, for the being and well-being of Mankind’. A midwife should combine theoretical and practical knowledge, even if the former was harder to obtain in a world where women could not attend universities and …