Pregnant Men: Modernism, Disability, and Biofuturity in

Now that the heat has died down from the 2008 presidential election along with the question of whether the candidates—including Hillary Clinton—were man enough for the job, it seems appropriate to acknowledge another political figure whose gendered authority seems to be under scrutiny. California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has rocked the Republican cradle lately by supporting stem cell research, domestic partner legislation, and, depending on the month, abortion rights. In the process he has morphed from bodybuilder to terminator to "governator." Perhaps as foreplay to his run for the nomination for California governorship, Schwarzenegger's 1994 movie. Junior, shows him, as Alex Hesse, morphing from terminator into progenitor. Hesse and Larry Arbogast, played by Danny DeVito, are genetic scientists who experiment with in vitro fertilization by implanting a fertilized egg in Hesse's hunky body. The plan is to bring the fetus into the first trimester, market a hormone that facilitates growth, and then terminate the pregnancy while cashing in on the new patent. The experiment works, and soon the terminator is coming to terms with the inconveniences of morning sickness, hormone imbalance, and having to buy a full-figure wardrobe. Despite these discomforts, the formerly dour Hesse likes the kinder, gentler person he becomes through pregnancy and refuses to follow through on the plan to abort. The joke involves seeing Mr. America become Mrs. America, and although Hesse becomes a mom, cross-dressing at one point as a steroid-enhanced ex-East German female athlete at a maternity hospital, the film makes sure to reinforce the idea that he is not a girlie man by introducing a love interest between him and Diana Reddin (Emma Thompson), a fellow genetic scientist. Their relationship is complicated by the fact that the anonymous donor egg Hesse has fertilized, unbeknownst to Reddin, is one of her own that she is using in her research. Thus, in the end, Hesse