Drawing from Merleau-Ponty’s theory of the agentic body, this research uses phenomenological in-depth interviews and auto-ethnographic journaling to explore South Korean immigrant women’s experiences of body changes in consumption over the course of pregnancy, childbirth and early motherhood in the U.S. The findings trace women’s experiences of disembodiment as they defer and alter their consumption, detail multicultural embodiment favoring South Korean cultural knowledge and traditions, and elaborate how their self-sacrificial and compensatory consumption aids in re-embodiment. The paper contributes to theoretical understandings by elaborating the force and layered dynamics of the agentic body in opposing and supporting women’s maternal identity construction, and as a powerful, gendered agent that orients consumer acculturation processes. © 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Disembodiment motherhood transitions Agentic body identity reconstruction re-embodiment

[No Keywords available]