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

Amanda Karlsson

doi:10.2478/nor-2019-0017

Abstract

This article’s ambition is to study the needs and motives embedded in the everyday usage of period trackers.

A period tracker is an app for smartphones to monitor the female cycle.

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.

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

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