VERY VERY accurate reading of who i am...

Name: Lisa Cobley
July 11 1989
11:01 AM Time Zone is BST
Bournemouth, UK

Rising Sign is in 21 Degrees Virgo
You tend to be very shy and not very self-assertive. You are supercritical about how you appear to others. Even though you may think you are uninteresting and dull, you are actually quite soft- spoken, orderly, neat and very likable. You are a perfectionist with high standards, and at times you can be quite tactless in pointing out the faults of others. Very practical, efficient and purposeful, your appearance and bearing reflect your need to appear graceful, sensible and reserved. You have a crisp, no-nonsense approach to dealing with others. Never lazy or self-indulgent, you tend to be dedicated to the work ethic.

Sun is in 19 Degrees Cancer.
Very emotional and sensitive, you have an intuitive understanding of the "vibes" around you. You tend to be quite generous, giving, loving and caring, but only when your own needs for emotional support, love and security have been met. If they are not met, you tend to withdraw into yourself and become very insecure and selfish. Your home and family (especially your mother or the person who played that role for you early on) represent security for you and thus assume a larger-than-life importance. Very sentimental, you have vivid and long- enduring memories of the past. No matter how well adjusted you are, you will always need a secret quiet place of your own in order to feel at peace. Feeding others can give you great pleasure you would enjoy being part of a large family.

Attention attention

Two of my friends that are actually pregnant, look how beautiful...

So coming all this way with my belly and all, i think its necessary to try and find out why i am rather shy and don't like being the centre of attention. I guess i have been really privileged to of grown up in an amazing family. All amazing people and incredibly funny! Having dinner with my family leaves me with tummy cramps from laughing so hard. Theres never a dull moment with a cobley around. I guess iv always been the one to laugh and listen to the jokes rather than make the joke myself. (hmm i seem to always get it wrong-punch lines are my enemy)

Anyway, so maybe its that?

Iv always followed astrology, looking at my rising sign(star sign and time of birth) i can definately see a lot of myself in this - its scary how true this is..

For you that know me well, take a read..

Iv highlighted what i feel is mostly true.

Your rising sign explains your outward personality, which is the personality that you show to others around you. You can read more about what a rising sign is here.

Virgo in Short

Virgo's are one of the most misunderstood signs of the zodiac. People think they're fussy, critical bad tempered and picky but that's only because they want everything to be perfect. This is the sign of cleanliness, although lots of Virgo's have the grottiest bedrooms and hang their clothes on the floor. They're extremely inquisitive and have a dreadful time trying to relax. Virgo's make fantastic friends. If a minor crises pops up you can be sure the Virgo will have everything under control in 30 seconds. They are always on the move because they like to learn as much as they can before they take off again. They excel at work so they probably get all the boring jobs (the ones Leo wouldn't be seen dead doing).

More About Virgo

Virgo's are highly intelligent, interested in everything and everyone and happy to be busy with many jobs and hobbies. Many have some kind of specialised knowledge and most are good with their hands. Their nit-picking ways can infuriate their colleagues. They find it hard to discuss their innermost feelings and this can make them hard to understand. In many ways, they are happier doing something practical than dealing with relationships. These people can overdo the self-sacrificial bit and make themselves martyrs to other people's impractical lifestyles. They are willing to fit in with whatever is going on and they can adjust to most things, but they mustn't neglect their own needs. Most avoid touching all but very close friends and family members and they find lovey-dovey behaviour embarrassing. These people can be very highly sexed and they may use this as a way of expressing love. Virgo's are criticised a good deal as children and are often made to feel unwelcome in their childhood homes. They in turn become very critical of others and they can use this in order to wound.

Many Virgo's overcome inhibitions by taking up acting, music, cookery or sports. Acting is particularly common to this sign because it allows them to put aside their fears and take on the mantle of someone quite different. They are shy and slow to make friends but when they do accept someone, they are the loyalist, gentlest and kindest of companions. They are great company and have a wonderful sense of humour.

Virgo at Work

If you need something done right, you’ll do it yourself.(sorry) In fact you pay attention to all the details and it’s usually those small differences that really set you apart from your competitors. What helps is that you are the practical type and enjoy learning about and doing all the work yourself. Even though you can be slow to catch on to new technologies, once you embrace them, you soon know them inside out. If things start to go bad, you are excellent at getting in there and fixing the situation. You do however, need to relax from time to time doing the everyday type of work, otherwise you will soon become too stressed and panicked and not much use at all!

OOh i love all this stuff...

Anywho...

AG I dont know why it makes me feel so uncomfortable because i love socializing and chatting to friends, i guess its just the whole stranger aspect. I have a protective bubble and once we have become familiar and are friends then sure invade my lil bubble, but if not i become shy and awkward. I prefer being modest instead of flaunting my qualities and stuff like that, so i hate it when i'm the center of attention. Iv also grown up with someone who is very much the opposite of me, she is my aunt although we are like sisters since she is now 21 years old. I guess for a long time i had been living in her shadow. We always shared friends and went to the same schools. I think this was a major reason for my mom sending me to boarding school in stellenbosch so i can become more of an individual and be my own person.

Im blabbing so im off for the night so i can have my last weekend as a pregnant lady! wheeei

More theory to follow tomorrow,i promise, its weekend and im exhausted so i just felt like chatting away!!

Body matters

The constant need to be more beautiful and thin is a common goal for most woman in the world. You would think pregnancy would hinder this goal for many women because their babys health is more important. Think again..

(The orange county series)

Holly: Are you here for prenatal yoga?

Kirsten: Yes, i am and you?

Holly: Yes, i just found out. How far along are you?

Kirsten: Not very, i just found out too

Holly: Well, this class is great. Iv worked way too hard for this body to just let it turn into some dumpy baby factory. i mean, who says i can't have a baby and a six pack?

Kirsten: (looking very confused) Ok, i should probaly stretch before class, excuse me

Holly: Hold on just a second, hey ho's come here (calling pregnant friends in the yoga class) This is Mrs. Cohen, she just found out shes preganant too.

Friends: O, my gos, congratulations - and your not even showing!!

Holly: so should we let her in?

Friends: o yeah shes totally ripped

Holly: we formed a club, promised ourselves we wouldnt turn out like molly the mammoth over there. (points to a normal pregnant lady in the class)

Friends and holly: euw

Friend: like in 9 months, i am so wearing my bikini. I dont care what anyone says

Friend no.2: and i told jerry if i get too big, im inducing at 8 months. Its much easier to lose the weight.

Holly: So do you want in? we call ourselves the 6 pack pack. Dont you just want to barf its so cute.

Kirsten: all the time

Writing sime thirty years ago, John Berger explored the impact of images of feminity on audiences, ranging from renaissance paintings to advertising. He identified an astounding gender difference in ways of seeing women.

"Men look at women, Women watch themselves being looked at"

This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves (1972:47)

John Berger explains this:

To be born a women has been to born, within an alloted and confined space, into the keeping of men. A women must continually watch herself . She is almost always being accompanied by her own image of herself. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.

"Women learn to reconstruct themselves. It is second nature to women to disguise themselves, dress themselves and decorate themselves with materials. Over the past 30 years, it has become more dramatic, women re arrange some of the organic material which is their body- sometimes with no harm on health and sometimes with devastating consequences"

Fashion, diet, extreme exercise, plastic surgery, surgical re modellind and chemical maintenance is just a few things that women are prepared to do to look better.

I just assumed women would do this after or before bearing a child but it seems women still feel the constant pressure to be a hot mommy.

"Gone are the days when an expectant mother would don a potato sack and pack on the pounds. Today’s preggos are sexier, and hornier, than ever. Yeah, baby"

Maxim magazine

"Women with pregorexia, as it has been dubbed, speak proudly of not looking pregnant when viewed from behind - while wearing 'normal' jeans into the second trimester has become something of a badge of honour. (src)"

"I starved my baby to stay thin. Woman Magazine"

All eyes on me

Well its coming to the end of this brief and i must say i think im relieved... the belly attention has become old now and all my clothes are just stretched. boohoo.

Too bad i cant use my special parking space for much longer...

Since the beginning of this case study, I started looking at the representation of pregnant women and how different people view these women.

One art style commonly used is the scopic stance.

Scopophilia is a term meaning, an erotic pleasure in looking.

But where is the erotic visual pleasure in looking at a pregnant women?

(Hmm, i was trying to find an appropriate image i could post here to show you what i meant but wow there is a lot of pregnant porn out there but i think a little bit too risky to post on blogspot-but by all means go see, its pretty hardcore - how far can one go?)

"While the sexualised imaging of women is well developed in the scopic imagery, pregnant women as photographic subjects seem to block the scopic gaze?"

This further explains..

"Maternal sexuality , embodied by the pregnant women, does not lend itself easily to appropriation. Instead, a vigorous patriarchal mandate keeps maternity and sexuality seperate"

There is, as Bourdieu demonstrated, a deep discomfort with applying the gaze, with its implied voyeuristic eroticism, to the figure of the pregnant women.

This is something that i discovered quite quickly in my pregi case study, some people feel uncomfortable looking at me. This was a challenge due to my akward shyness but it also made me think. Are people looking at me because of my class? Is it because i show evidence that i am sexually active? Is it because of my age?

Artist, Alice Neels work explores the visual representation of the pregnant body. Her work is amazing. Here are some of her works (note the gazes)

"Because her sexual history is inscribed on her body, the male gaze cannot penetrate her"

Cheating schmeating

Ok ok so i cheated and yes i know im supposed to be saying, i feel horrible and defeated but i honestly don't. :) (whoops) -10 :p

I can walk through the shops without anyone looking or have the feeling of a million eyes on my body, i can fit through small spaces and i dont have to sit like a pregnant lady with my legs open with everything resting on my belly. yes! I went to the animation college and fellow students did not pass judgement!

I am so not ready to be a pregi lady, i really have appreciation for any women who is pregnant. That constant extra load must be extremely tiring. Iv had a fake plastic one under my clothes and i am exhausted. No wonder why in ten things i hate about you does the dad make his daughter wear a fake belly before she went on a date.

(i wonder what the equivalent action would be for the boy?)

Normally the dad encourages the son to get in there, you know the "go for it my son" attitude)

Although i didnt have it on, i could still feel the belly -which was really weird. I kept resting my hands on my tummy and walking with a slightly arched back. I was still very much aware of my body.

Although shy, talking and approaching people was actually easier to do when i got used to my tummy. I felt older which is something different for me because people still mistake me for a 15 year old girl. Once a girl at gym asked me the other day if i can't wait for matric?? hmmm...

So i felt more mummy like and without it i feel like a regular student. Its amazing how a plastic casing can make me feel more mommy like. :)

Being flat tummied is great - it doesnt stretch all my damn clothes :) haha

Pregnancy in the media

Print ad - Harley Davidson motorcycle tours

So Harley Davidson is for pedophiles?

Harley men impregnate High School students?

 

Woman pregnant. Wasn't me. 

Source: The Bible. FHM. Men are like that.

The bad boy image: is it cool for you to knock up a girl?

MTV's new documentary - 16 and pregnant. WATCH THIS LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLiXS02Mj7U&feature=related

Teen girl pregnancy pact (teenage girls becoming pregnant on purpose)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fvcJ0cnCV8&feature=fvst

Print ads attempting to create a shock value by switching the genders around. Addressing society's discrimination against "girls getting pregnant" Hello! It takes two people to get pregnant and both should be equally accountable!

A pregnant man? Thats new..

Wow how old is this movie??

I remember watching it when i was teeny weeny!! Back then, i laughed at the ludacris thought of Arnold Schwarzenegger being pregnant. Now i wonder what this movie is trying to suggest by pushing the conventions of pregnancy?

Does this suggest men can do exactly what women do? Or is it just a silly comedy that can never become a reality?

"This film simultaneously suggests that women’s pregnancies are unremarkable and unworthy of attention. David Thomson argues that ‘the biology proposed in Junior . . . is fatuous and even offensive for it can be taken as one more way of dismissing the female body’ (1995, 24).

Is it offensive that the holder of the hypermasculine Mr Universe title is shown possessing a characterisitc that only women possess?

"Pregnant women appear to “have arrived” and are free at last from the social constraints which formerly tied them to domesticity and the private realm’ (Longhurst 2000, 458). But like Matthews and Wexler (2000), Longhurst suggests that these gains have not fully shifted ideas that ‘public displays of pregnant bodies are unseemly and improper’ (2000,

470). In Junior, female embodied experiences of pregnancy are perhaps improper and unseemly, but crucially, and in direct contrast to the finely tuned and complex presentations of a pregnant man, they are uninteresting. Women don’t change or benefit from either physical or subjective gestational experiences, as they are figured as always

already almost pregnant"

Its a pretty weird movie but it does suggest the notion of motherhood and if it is something that only women can do. I must say, it is disturbing seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger rub his sore pregnant nipples. Watching it back then i laughed but wow, Arnolds acting is shocking! (seriously, you have to watch it just to see how bad it is-its amusing :)

Well give it a watch and let me know what you all think... im undecided

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

It's goofy and ridiculous and preposterous, and yet it makes you feel good, and there is something oddly heartwarming about the sight of this macho guy melting with feelings of protectiveness"

The weekend i had was pretty uneventful (i am exhausted from the week!!) I did minor things and when i did go out, i wasnt even looking to see if i got the reaction i was supposed too. I think im getting used to all of this, even without the belly, i walk as though i am pregnant (tummy pushed out,arched back), wow i must look stupid!

But, I did babysit my lil cousin tonight who i absoloutely love so although the pregi belly was not in full action this weekend, my mothering skills of feeding, bathing, playing and putting to bed were. (below-Sarah, my cousin, yes shes that cute!)