A room of one’s own?: Using period trackers to escape menstrual stigma

Abstract

This article’s ambition is to study the needs and motives embedded in the everyday usage of period trackers.1 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 datafied2 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.