This research project investigates the postpartum body as a key site where medicalization, aestheticization, and socio-technical transformation intersect. It focuses on so-called “mommy makeover” interventions—combinations of aesthetic and reconstructive procedures, including breast surgery, abdominoplasty, liposuction, genital surgery, and minimally invasive treatments—that are increasingly marketed to women after pregnancy and childbirth.

Rather than treating these interventions as matters of individual choice or beauty culture alone, the project conceptualizes the postpartum body as a contested terrain where norms of femininity, motherhood, sexuality, recovery, and bodily optimization are negotiated and reconfigured. In this context, postpartum bodily changes are not simply “given” but are actively problematized, rendered visible, and made amenable to intervention across clinical, media, and commercial settings.

The project is situated at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies (STS), medical sociology, and the sociology of the body, while also engaging anthropological perspectives on embodiment and gender. It examines how medical technologies and surgical practices rearticulate the boundaries between treatment and enhancement, between health and aesthetics, and between reproductive and sexualized bodies.

Empirically, the project analyzes aesthetic surgery practices, expert discourses, and women’s embodied experiences in the context of postpartum body modification. Particular attention is given to Türkiye, a significant setting shaped by medical tourism, the expansion of aesthetic medicine, and shifting body norms. The project explores how women interpret and negotiate bodily changes after childbirth, how medical professionals frame and legitimize interventions, and how ideals of restoration, normality, attractiveness, and well-being are mobilized in relation to the postpartum body.

A first version of this project was submitted to the DFG in 2020. Although it was not funded, the project has since been further developed and remains an ongoing line of research.

Related publications

Şahinol, M., Şahinol, M. “VULVA STUDY. hidden but not undiscovered” in Conversation with “Manufacturing the Vulva”. Nanoethics 16,205–222 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-022-00421-2