Blog #5

The Feminist Frequency web series discusses negative portrayals of women in pop culture. One trope talked about in the video is the Magical Pregnancy. This is when women’s ability to get pregnant is taken advantage of to create a more dramatic story. It makes pregnancy seem disgusting, terrifying and nightmarish. An example of the Mystical Pregnancy trope is Bella Swan’s pregnancy in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1.

            When Bella and Edward go on their honeymoon, Bella seduces Edward and finds herself pregnant two weeks later. Although she has only been pregnant for a few days, the baby has grown very quickly and Bella has a large baby bump. Bella becomes weak and thin because the human-vampire hybrid child takes away all of her strength, nearly killing Bella. When others hear of this event, they begin to believe that Bella’s baby is a demon, and they threaten to kill the child. Bella becomes so weak that she has to drink human blood out of a sippy cup to satisfy the fetus’ vampiric thirst and regain strength.

            Bella goes into a painful labor involving an emergency C-Section where Edward’s adopted sister cuts Bella open with a knife. Bella is so sickly thin and bruised that Edward has to bite and inject his venom into her heart to save her life and transform her into a vampire. Bella appears to be dead but at the end of the movie, her heart finally stops, the venom heals her wounds, and she awakens as a vampire.