1. Moss Lynch

2. Avatars and the Visual Culture of Reproduction on the Web Lisa Nakamura

3. Reproduction on the Web Many women love sharing their experiences as pregnant women and as mothers through social media such as: – blogging – bulletin boards – websites These women identify as mothers and create their own pregnant avatars to: – reflect their physical states – Engage in an interactive moment of self-representation – Share experiences with other mothers like themselves

4. Pregnant or not, women inhabit the space of the internet with prospective images of family, motherhood, and in some cases, loss or grief. These motherhood social media sites allow for women to share their experience with other women, gain tips and tricks on being a successful mother, and share photos and stories for the world to praise.

5. Example of Motherhood Forum Site

6. Avatars and Reality Women are constantly living with gender stereotypes that make them out to be sexy, skinny, fit, and perfect. In videogames, the female avatar is in peak formation, flexible, agile, and sexy. Considered, the “unique aesthetic for perfection,” embodied in Lara Croft from Tomb Raider leaves behind the “real female body” in a significant way.

7. Lara Croft from Tomb Raider epitomizes the female avatar.

8. Avatars and Reality (cont.) Reasoning for creating “mother avatars” is show women in their natural state, chubbiness and all. Parenting web sites exemplify the ways that women use the internet to embody themselves in reproductive states – Pregnancy (pregnant avatar memorializes a body in transition, one that is out of the user’s control. – Nursing – Mother

9. Ultrasounds and Avatars Ultrasounds represent images of fetuses suspended in an electronic elsewhere Doctors, Medical Illustrators, and Research Scientists are considered the gatekeepers to what a women can see, and when she is allowed to see it.

10. Women want freedom over their bodies, and create online avatars to depict their feelings through visual imagery. When women make graphical imagery, they are producing a counterdicourse that challenges the binarism of hypervisible/invisible pregnant bodies. – They are controlling what everyone else can see, when they want people to see them.

11. Creation of a Female Avatar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ_DQFVuixM

12. Entrepreneurial Mothers’ Balance of Work and Family Paige P. Edley

13. Women like to be in control; control of their bodies, their work, their lives, and their families. Like mothers who create avatars in parenting sites try to control their image and access to their images, working mothers too try to gain control of their schedules and families.

14. Separation of Public and Private Domains The internet is full of websites dedicated to entrepreneurial parents, especially entrepreneurial mothers. These types of women want to be mothers and entrepreneurs simultaneously and must find a balance between the two in order to gain control.

15. Public vs. Private Realms Employed mothers often experience both contradictions in their everyday lives and false separations of private and public spheres. Referred to as segmentist, the public-private paradigm, the myth of separate worlds, and public-private divide, or split, the mentality of separate spheres and the assumptions that distinguish home and work as separate continue to constrain employed mothers in the 21 st century.

16. Cyborgs and Online Communication Technology allows women to develop cyborg identities, which are defined as chimera, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism. “The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics” (p. 259). Cyborgs and Avatars differ because Avatars are online representations of women whereas cyborgs are political identities that are synthesized from fusions of outer identities. – Women are human beings, using technology as a means of communication and balance between work and family. They are virtually, ½ human worker and ½ computer worker = cyborg.

17. Entrepreneurial mothers are represented in the concept of cyborg because they are able to master the tools (the computer and household items) needed to make their mark on the business world and their family. These mothers are able to gain control of their vision; to have a balanced workplace that coincides with a happy family. By working out of their homes and utilizing as much technology as possible, they are “co-constructing their identities with their clients, their spouses, their children, and other entrepreneurial mothers online.

18. Women Entrepreneurs Top 3 Reasons For Working At Home 1). Flexibility 2). Desire to be one’s own boss 3). Spend time with children

19. Flexibility Women who are able to have flexible schedules are able to spend time with their families and have more balance among work, leisure, and family.

20. Be Your Own Boss Women choose to start their own business to escape the “glass ceiling,” which is an invisible barrier that precludes women from upper- management positions. The home-based businesses offer women greater chances of advancement and more satisfaction.

21. Family Time Many mothers are concerned that their children will not be able to have enough love and attention from their mothers. By working at home, mothers are able to find a space in the home where they can set up a home office while partaking in playful moments with their children as well. Creativity is the key to simultaneous work and child rearing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS3dxf-2jWA – Spending time with the family is awesome, right?!

22. Third-Wave Feminism and Mother Third-wave feminists are independent and self-sufficient; they want it all! Entrepreneurial mothers relate to third-wave feminists because they are independent and take matters into their own hands and homes in order to establish a strong work and personal relationship with their connections in their lives.

23. Wrap-Up Women want control of their body, their life, their image, their work, and their family. Like third wave feminists, the want it all. Women, especially mothers, will do whatever is necessary to balance and control their lives whether it be an animated Avatar on a parenting website, or becoming half machine in order to spend more time with their children.