Start Date
12-6-2011 9:30 AM
End Date
12-6-2011 12:00 PM
Subject Areas
North America, modern, bodies, children, family, gender, marriage, motherhood, reproduction
Abstract
In the spring of 1952, the hit television comedy I Love Lucy faced a premature ending. The married stars, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, just found out that they were expecting. Fearing to offend viewers’ sensibilities, network executives and sponsors insisted that “you cannot show a pregnant woman on television.” Eventually, Ball and Arnaz managed to keep the show alive by turning Ball’s alter-ego, Lucy Ricardo, into an expectant mother. In sensational seven episodes, viewers followed Lucille/Lucy from the day she found out that she had conceived until the birth of her son, an event that happened in real life and on television on the same day. These episodes broke every single rating record.
Scholars have paid little attention to this controversy, focusing primarily on the pregnancy announcement or the childbirth episode. My paper examines the entire pregnancy arch, which represented and at the same time shaped cultural attitudes toward pregnancy in post-World War II America. Drawing in addition on memoirs, newspapers reviews, advertisements, corporate documents, and viewers’ letters, I use I Love Lucy as lens to understanding middle-class pregnancy in the Baby Boom era. During these years, a new generation of expectant parents negotiated the public visibility of the “pregnancy bump” with cultural critics, health care experts, public opinion makers, and business leaders who had a stake in the expanding market of maternity and baby care merchandising. This examination uncovers the tensions and confusion behind a complex process that redefined Americans’ perceptions of pregnancy.
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“You Cannot Show a Pregnant Woman on Television”: I Love Lucy and the Cultural Making of the Visible Belly Bump in Post-World War II America
In the spring of 1952, the hit television comedy I Love Lucy faced a premature ending. The married stars, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, just found out that they were expecting. Fearing to offend viewers’ sensibilities, network executives and sponsors insisted that “you cannot show a pregnant woman on television.” Eventually, Ball and Arnaz managed to keep the show alive by turning Ball’s alter-ego, Lucy Ricardo, into an expectant mother. In sensational seven episodes, viewers followed Lucille/Lucy from the day she found out that she had conceived until the birth of her son, an event that happened in real life and on television on the same day. These episodes broke every single rating record.
Scholars have paid little attention to this controversy, focusing primarily on the pregnancy announcement or the childbirth episode. My paper examines the entire pregnancy arch, which represented and at the same time shaped cultural attitudes toward pregnancy in post-World War II America. Drawing in addition on memoirs, newspapers reviews, advertisements, corporate documents, and viewers’ letters, I use I Love Lucy as lens to understanding middle-class pregnancy in the Baby Boom era. During these years, a new generation of expectant parents negotiated the public visibility of the “pregnancy bump” with cultural critics, health care experts, public opinion makers, and business leaders who had a stake in the expanding market of maternity and baby care merchandising. This examination uncovers the tensions and confusion behind a complex process that redefined Americans’ perceptions of pregnancy.