WOMEN’S STUDIES IN COMMUNICATION 2017, VOL. 40, NO. 1, 111–128 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2016.1247400 ARTICLE Empowering Disgust: Redefining Alternative Postpartum Placenta Practices Elizabeth Dickinson a , Karen Foss b , and Charlotte Kroløkke c a Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA; b Department of Communication and Journalism, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA; c Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark ABSTRACT This article examines communication practices surrounding the unconventional yet emerging trend of postpartum placenta use: eating, encapsulating, or burying the human placenta. Through interviews with both supporters and nonsupporters of postpartum placenta practices, we explore conceptualizations of placenta consumption and burial within larger mothering, childbirth, and postpartum rhetorics. We argue that placenta practices function rhetorically within a core frame of disgust, which both supporters and nonsupporters initially use to respond to placenta use. Yet supporters rearticulate the literal meaning of disgust to create an empowering rhetorical frame from which to view placenta practices and mother- hood. In effect, supporters reframe the meaning of disgust toward the mainstream Western medicalization of birth in order to position placenta practices, natural childbirth, and mothering as empowering. KEYWORDS Abjection; childbirth; disgust; juxtaposition; motherhood; placenta; placentophagy Issues of choice surrounding reproduction, childbirth, and mothering have been central to contemporary feminist discourses and theory (e.g., see Hayden & O’Brien Hallstein, 2010). With the availability of birth control and the legalization of abortion in the 1970s in the United States, access to reproductive choices became a reality for many. This access was followed by myriad choices about pregnancy and mothering as well, including where to receive pre- and postnatal care and where to give birth (in a hospital, a birthing center, or at home). There are birthing intervention and treatment options, such as “mainstream”/“Western” medicalized induced labor, epidurals, or Cesarean sections, as well as what are generally called “alternative,” “natural,” or “midwifery” decisions, such as home births, hypnosis, and water births. 1 Additional birthing and motherhood choices can include the birthing position (e.g., on the back in bed, squatting, or reclining in water); the practitioners one uses (obstetricians, nurses, midwives, or doulas); breast or formula feeding; crib sleeping or cosleeping; and so on. One of the more recent options mothers face is what to do with the placenta after childbirth. During pregnancy, the body creates the placenta—a one-pound, dark reddish- blue, disk-shaped organ that connects the fetus to the uterine wall via the umbilical cord. The placenta transfers nutrients, oxygen, and microorganisms to the fetus and disposes of CONTACT Elizabeth Dickinson eadickins@gmail.com Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 4719 McColl Building, CB 3490, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/uwsc. © 2017 The Organization for Research on Women and Communication