Co-Curators + Authors of “Designing Motherhood”: Michelle Millar Fisher + Amber Winick
About Michelle: Hailing from Scotland, Michelle Millar Fisher is a curator and an architecture and design historian. Her work focuses on the intersections of people, power, design, and craft. She has worked as an educator, curator, and historian in universities and museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the MFA Boston where she is currently the Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts.
She has long been interested in the confluence of gender and design, the subject of an independent co-organized exhibition and co-published book, I Will What I Want: Women, Design, and Empowerment and most recently she has collaborated with fellow design historian Amber Winick on a book (MIT Press 2021), exhibition, curriculum, and program series, Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births. She has co-authored many books, essays, and exhibitions. michellemillarfisher.com
About Amber: Amber Winick is a mother of three, design historian, and parenting consultant. She has received two Fulbrights, and has lived and researched maternal and child-related designs, policies, and practices around the world. Together with Michelle Millar Fisher, she is the author of Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births, published by MIT Press. Learn more about her work at amberwinick.com.
Here they answer the Mama Sex Six:
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the phrase "mama sex"?
Michelle: First thought is: American! I'm Scottish and so I use "mum." Mama is still very foreign to me as a word even thoguh I've lived here for the last fifteen years. Second thought is: I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it or had it. Third thought: to me, the two words offer very different and divergent residences or connotations, with “mama“ to me reflecting a specific term of endearment that is a subsidiary of the larger idea of a mother figure, and (conversely) “sex“ reflecting an umbrella term for an activity that has many different permutations that fall underneath it.
Amber: Because I'm in the last trimester of pregnancy, the first thing that comes to mind is having sex while pregnant. It's wonderful for a time--extra blood flow, extra cushioning, nerve endings extra sensitive--but then it becomes about finding a comfortable position. It occurs to me that birthing positions and sex positions are very much linked. As is sexuality and birthing. The midwife that supported the birth of my second daughter used to say, "We birth just like we make love." There are some definite parallels, like feeling safe in one's space and with one's company, letting loose, and just losing yourself in the experience of it. I haven't yet had an orgasmic birth, but I'm open to it happening this time around!
Predictor Home Pregnancy Test Kit, 1971, designed by Meg Crane. Image courtesy Brendan McCabe
What inspired you to work/create/advocate on the topic of "mama sex"?
Michelle: What brought me to work on Designing Motherhood was lots of different things, but I was particularly interested in working in my mid-30s in museum departments where in order to have a curatorial job you never spoke about your family, and none of the women for whom I worked with or who I worked alongside had children. The hours were just too demanding. That seemed, to me at least, deeply troubling. I started writing about design, which is my area of study, but from the perspective of devices like the breast pump which are meant to be used out of sight and out of mind but have a direct connection to the workplace and the way in which lactating people navigate it. I was also deeply inspired by my own mother who was a single parent of three children, a domestic abuse survivor, disabled, and a total badass.
Amber: When my brilliant writing partner, Michelle Millar Fisher, and I met, we bonded over our mutual love and interest in design for the arc of reproduction. We are both design historians, but the institutions where we worked, studied, and venerated treated this subject matter as furtive and unimportant, and dismissed it as "a woman's issue." We argue that birth and reproduction are universally relevant. After all, whether or not we choose to have a child, we are all born. We wanted to know this subject intimately and so we went rogue and did the book and exhibition on our own, after partnering with the wonderful Maternity Care Coalition.
Michelle in exhibition installation mode
In your work/practice/art, what are the biggest hurdles mothers are facing in terms of their sexuality?
Michelle: The biggest hurdle is that reproductive labor is still so discriminated against in the workplace. So if you are a mother, it’s quite a hostile work place, but even if like me you are not, it’s often not totally by choice. You either foreclose the opportunity of work that you want to do and the way that you want to do it, or you have to deal with a whole load of extra bullshit. Neither option is particularly inviting.
Amber: I'm inspired by Esther Perel's definition of the erotic, which is holistic and expansive. Perel argues that eroticism isn’t sex; it’s sexuality transformed by the human imagination. It’s the thoughts, dreams, anticipation, unruly impulses, and even painful memories which make up our vast erotic landscapes. This can absolutely be expressed through one's work, one's communication, and one's desire to be titillated and excited by ideas, expressions, duties, and actions. Female identifying people have long been asked to suppress these impulses--within work, but also in wanting to derive pleasure through caregiving. Better support systems for working mothers would go a long way in harnessing this kind of excitement in daily life. It's just one of the many reasons why we advocate for family leave, better pay, and flexible working conditions for caregivers.
What do you think society at large should know about motherhood and sexuality? And what is society getting wrong right now in regards to it?
Michelle: I think society at large does know quite a lot about motherhood and sexuality, because women make up 50% of the population, or just a bit more in fact, and many of them have care responsibilities that fit under the umbrella term of motherhood. So I think that it’s more that the very small, minority parts of society the whole power over cultural conversations and resources need to have a better understanding about the issues the people who identify with the term mother.
Amber: I think a lot about making babies, and how the process can be, in turn, romantic, scientific, stressful, pleasurable, magical, accidental, hard won, way too easy, or incredibly arduous. I wish we had more support for those who are trying to prevent pregnancy and conceive. There's a lot of deep self knowledge, alchemy, psychology--even spirituality--involved. I wish we as a culture had better ways to explore and support pleasure, as well as the prevention and achievement of pregnancy, and how they all connect. Opening up these conversations and empowering people to know themselves from a number of different facets--these are just a few of the lofty goals we have for the DM project.
What piece of sex advice would you give mothers? Was there something you wish someone had told you?
Michelle: I’m not an expert in this area of course. But I do think that postpartum in general should be spoken about in much greater detail by absolutely everybody. Those who go through it, those who are medical and health providers. This is an important conversation that has an impact on peoples lives and sexual experiences and sense of sexuality.
Amber: Your pleasure is beautiful, lifegiving, powerful and wholly worthwhile.
Amber Winick
Let's amplify our voice: Who are some mamas you love following on social media?
@maternitycarecoalition
@sweetwatertaffy — MCC associate Director of policy and an amazing mother and city planner
@michellemillarfisher
@designingmotherhood
@nur.midwifery
@reclaimblackmotherhood
@blackmoondoula
@journeyfullofdreamz
@julianabarton
@nyssacare
@adrianne_edwards
@graceful_savagery
Find out more about Designing Motherhood
"The provocative new book and exhibition series, “Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births,” makes the case that there is a whole world of objects pertaining to women, mothers and pregnant people that have been overlooked from the perspective of form and function, and unstudied in terms of how their designs came to be."
New York Times Arts
While birth often brings great joy, making babies is a knotty enterprise. The designed objects that surround us when it comes to menstruation, birth control, conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood vary as oddly, messily, and dramatically as the stereotypes suggest. This smart, image-rich, fashion-forward, and design-driven book explores more than eighty designs—iconic, conceptual, archaic, titillating, emotionally charged, or just plain strange—that have defined the relationships between people and babies during the past century.
Each object tells a story. In striking images and engaging text, Designing Motherhood unfolds the compelling design histories and real-world uses of the objects that shape our reproductive experiences. The authors investigate the baby carrier, from the Snugli to BabyBjörn, and the (re)discovery of the varied traditions of baby wearing; the tie-waist skirt, famously worn by a pregnant Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy, and essential for camouflaging and slowly normalizing a public pregnancy; the home pregnancy kit, and its threat to the authority of male gynecologists; and more. Memorable images—including historical ads, found photos, and drawings—illustrate the crucial role design and material culture plays throughout the arc of human reproduction.
The book features a prologue by Erica Chidi and a foreword by Alexandra Lange.
Contributors
Luz Argueta-Vogel, Zara Arshad, Nefertiti Austin, Juliana Rowen Barton, Lindsey Beal, Thomas Beatie, Caitlin Beach, Maricela Becerra, Joan E. Biren, Megan Brandow-Faller, Khiara M. Bridges, Heather DeWolf Bowser, Sophie Cavoulacos, Meegan Daigler, Anna Dhody, Christine Dodson, Henrike Dreier, Adam Dubrowski, Michelle Millar Fisher, Claire Dion Fletcher, Tekara Gainey, Lucy Gallun, Angela Garbes, Judy S. Gelles, Shoshana Batya Greenwald, Robert D. Hicks, Porsche Holland, Andrea Homer-Macdonald, Alexis Hope, Malika Kashyap, Karen Kleiman, Natalie Lira, Devorah L Marrus, Jessica Martucci, Sascha Mayer, Betsy Joslyn Mitchell, Ginger Mitchell, Mark Mitchell, Aidan O'Connor, Lauren Downing Peters, Nicole Pihema, Alice Rawsthorn, Helen Barchilon Redman, Airyka Rockefeller, Julie Rodelli, Raphaela Rosella, Loretta J. Ross, Ofelia Pérez Ruiz, Hannah Ryan, Karin Satrom, Tae Smith, Orkan Telhan, Stephanie Tillman, Sandra Oyarzo Torres, Malika Verma, Erin Weisbart, Deb Willis, Carmen Winant, Brendan Winick, Flaura Koplin Winston
Instagram @designingmotherhood
Online designingmotherhood.org
Book pre-order from MIT Press here.
Recent press: New York Times and the Guardian
