A Room of One’s Own?: Using period trackers to escape menstrual stigma

Based on twelve in-depth interviews with Danish women who use period trackers, I explore the connections among menstrual stigma and the usage of period trackers and investigate how digital traces from their datafied

By datafied body, I mean the representation of the fleshly, physical body created by tracked data.

bodies transmit meaning to their everyday life. The women in the study described how the app provides them with reassurance and privacy, and thus the article finds that 1) period apps are experienced as private, shame-free rooms for exploratory engagement with the menstruating body and 2) the risk of embodied data potentially becoming shareable commodities does not affect the everyday self-tracking practice of these women.

eISSN:: 2001-5119
Language:: English

Publication timeframe:: 2 times per year
Journal Subjects:: Social Sciences, Communication Science, Mass Communication, Public and Political Communication

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A Room of One’s Own?: Using period trackers to escape menstrual stigma

Published Online: Jun 28, 2019

Page range: 111 - 123

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2019-0017

Keywordsfemale self-tracking, apps, privacy, datafied bodies, menstrual stigma

© 2019 Amanda Karlsson, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
female self-tracking, apps, privacy, datafied bodies, menstrual stigma