| Abstract: | In their conception of the “third shift,” Dworkin and Wachs argue that working mothers engage in fitness and bodywork in addition to the first shift of professional work and the second shift of household labor and childcare. Within this third shift, the goal for women is to “erase physical evidence of motherhood” and return to the pre-pregnancy self. The cultivation of a body socially defined as “good” and “attractive” thus serves as a visible illustration of an embodied subjectivity anchored in morality and neoliberal personal responsibility, signifying a strong woman who has her body and her life under control. Utilizing thematic analysis to examine dominant constructions of embodied motherhood in popular texts and products, this article offers five conceptual categories to explore why and how women in engage in bodywork. Understanding how women operationalize the third shift of fitness and bodywork is important because it helps to unpack the struggles of contemporary motherhood and the competing realities of home, work, and self-care. |
