The idea of women tracking their menstrual cycles for contraceptive purposes is clearly not new. From the development of the calendar-based method in the 1930s, technology was enlisted to make this “natural” system more clear and reliable. But in the 21st century, what does it mean to digitise our reproductive organs? Do period tracker apps offer freedom and liberation, or new chains of our own making?
The idea of self-surveillance dates back much further than the smartphone – but fell into abeyance around the advent of the contraceptive pill. Freed from the unpredictability of ovulation, women assumed primary responsibility for their contraceptive choices. The nexus between sex and reproduction was fundamentally severed. “Natural family planning” methods were confined to those who, for medical or moral reasons, abjured the pill. Conversely, those with fertility difficulties undertook menstrual tracking in the hope that more information could aid conception.
All this has changed with the advent of the so-called “quantified self movement”. From Fitbits to ovulation-tracking Ava bracelets, the digital revolution means that we now seek self-knowledge through numbers. Technology has been enlisted within a fervid atmosphere of self-scrutiny to track, visualise, analyse and ultimately publicise elements of our health and wellbeing.
Period trackers are now some of the most downloaded apps, offering information to “demystify womanhood”. Attractive interfaces make the collection of data easy and fun. With recent studies having suggested some association between hormonal contraceptives and depression, tracker apps promising “contraception with no side effects” and have a new audience and unprecedented appeal.
There are undoubted pleasures to be derived here – a sense of control, empowerment and self-discovery offered through a personalised prediction of the arrival of one’s period or the onset of PMS. The geeky and seemingly virtuous satisfaction of entering intimate details about appetite, sex drive, skin condition and stool quality, with the option of pressing “I” to glean why this is helpful, offers the opportunity to discover more about menstrual phases and associated biological changes.
Centuries of stigma and taboo around the discussion of the fluid, leaky, uncontained nature of women’s bodies is dissipating through tech-facilitated conversations – especially through online forums. Most intriguingly, through anecdotal and candid chats in the course of putting together my audio-visual installation at the Science Gallery London, the use of tracking apps (often with condoms) as an alternative to the pill facilitates more intimate conversations among straight couples about women’s health, and the assumption of more collective responsibility for the nature and timing of sexual intimacy.
Yet the increased visibility of women’s bodily functions clearly brings dangers. It is after all a form of intimate surveillance – do we really know where our biometric details go? Have we consented to their use for marketing or research purposes? Do we understand the science behind these apps, especially if we are relying on them to aid potentially life-changing choices to predict, prevent or plan pregnancy?
Most worryingly, this near-obsessive level of monitoring and self-disciplining could simply produce further anxiety and stress. In the ubiquitous and daily tracking of our moods, symptoms and cycles, these apps might be seen to define and constrain women’s personhood, once again, to their bodies. In its obsessive reduction of women’ s horizons to their reproductive capacities, I fear that this tech merely returns us again to the age-old “curse of Eve”.
• Dr Alana Harris is a lecturer in modern British history at King’s College London. Period Piece will run from 7 to 13 November at the Science Gallery London
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