Even if the concept of “perfect” is wobbly and contradictory, it remains the pregnant woman’s goal. A perfect pregnancy style, a perfect weight gain, a perfect attitude toward pregnancy. When a woman is unable to achieve that perfection, or refuses its pursuit altogether, she’s shamed: if not by her immediate circle of friends and family, whose shaming is often cloaked in the language of “advice,” then by the representations of “ideal pregnancy” that, over the course of the last thirty years, have become regular fixtures of our media diet.
