Digitally mediated spaces provide a highly explorative field where anthropological analysis of the varied meanings and discourses on women’s bodies, becomes crucial. While the democratisation of media has facilitated the formation of counter-hegemonic spaces (Sinha, 2017), these spaces can also reinforce certain dominant cultural practices and ideologies (Turner and Saber, 2021). The present research seeks to inquire how these dual processes get transpired through digital media imageries associated with motherhood and maternal clothing practices, circulated through the Instagram pages of maternity brands from India. The study locates the notions of ‘female altruism’ (Browner and Lewin, 1982) and ‘female mobility’ ( Konstantinou, 2018) in the context of consumerist capitalism (Perera and Gunawardana, 2014). We argue that digital media spaces should be understood as sites, where these notions are accommodated, negotiated and simultaneously contested. We propose that the emerging descriptions of a maternity wear as ‘mamma bean comfy’, ‘planet-friendly’, or ‘super-snug’ etc., require a feminist engagement on the conceptual category of motherhood through tropes other than that of pain and patriarchy.
Through an analysis of Instagram images by devising a feminist semiotic approach, the study discerns the shifting and co-existing cultural values associated with pregnancy and motherhood in the region, along with looking at the consequential role of digital media platforms as emerging social institutions in the contemporary society. The Instagram pages of four maternity brands considered for this study are based on different geographical locations in India, reflecting cultural variations and particularities with regard to the traditional and emerging notions of motherhood and gender norms prevalent in the sub-continent.
