Presentation Outline

Slide one - Introduction

Slide two - Inspiration of topic. Explain the Frida company and its mission. Show the Ad and
talk about how it connects to a larger societal context for the shame connected to women's health
and dismissal of the normalization of childbirth.

Slide three - Quotes from Laura Gilreath, who is the woman in the ad. She was five-month
pregnant during the shoot. She is disappointed at the backlash but not surprised.
- "A woman who just gave birth is not too graphic. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.",
“I think it helped with my own preparation, I didn’t know about any of this and I was
already five months pregnant”,
“I was disappointed that it didn’t air at the Oscars. I think people don’t want to see the
dirtiness of birthing a baby, even though so many people have babies. They want to keep the idea
of a woman being very clean and sexy, like how Kate Middleton had a baby and then came out
of the hospital and looked perfect. But a woman who just gave birth is not too graphic. It’s
nothing to be ashamed of. So many of our stories are the same, but we suffer in silence because
we don’t talk about our experiences.”

Slide four- Quotes continued, from actress Busy Phillips, a youtube comment, and the CEO of
Frida.
Explain how these show a conversation being started in the public and how much women
care about this issue.

Slide five - Discuss media portrayals of pregnant and postpartum health and how it tends to be
unrealistic. This causes young first-time mothers to either feel underprepared for postpartum
recovery or feel afraid of birth in general. Explain the study findings on weight loss after birth.

Slide six - Talk about the “Media portrayals of pregnant women, new moms unrealistic ” study
and how it connects to real life rather than media portrayal of postpartum health.

Slide seven - Explain the complications attached to postpartum recovery. Many women talk
about postpartum recovery with their doctors, but with all of the information given to them about
their body and their new baby often new mothers will ignore symptoms. Discuss these
complications and the findings of the Mayo Clinic about the mother’s health and postpartum
depression.
Aleena Slide 8- Excersize with the class- put yourself into a woman whos just given birth shoes-
now imagine the worry you have towards bringing a new life into the world. This is commonly
the start of postpartum depression. Jennifer Payne, a psychiatrist and the director of the
Women's Mood Disorders Center at Johns Hopkins University. Speaks on the symptoms of
postpartum depression stating, "What I tend to look for are women who are barely getting
themselves together and taking care of the baby.”

Aleena Slide 9- Video on Mothers speaking about their own experience with postpartum
depression.

Slide 10 - Talk about the “It’s Just Not Very Realistic” article and how it shows that women are
unhappy about portrayals of birth and post-birth health.

Slide 11 - Negative media that shows unrealistic post-birth expectations.

Slide 12 - Positive media that show the realistic side of postpartum recovery and how real
women feel about their bodies after birth.
.

Slide 13-The Yellow Wallpaper the woman had an unknown illness. With the knowledge, we
now have about postpartum depression and its symptoms we can assume the woman’s illness to
be Postpartum Depression. In class, we discussed the way mental illnesses were treated then and
now we can see how much ‘progress’ has been made.

Slide 14- Quotes in the book where we can see the woman clearly showing signs of postpartum
depression. She worries about the baby, but she cannot be with him. There is a disconnect that
many mothers feel with their babies after giving birth. As well as rapid mood swings.

Works Cited
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