Women are using period-tracking apps to keep track of their periods (as the name would indicate) — and the New York Times is on it. My original thought on the matter was, “Why would I need this? My body has a built-in period tracking app. It went off the other week when I cried at Prince William and Kate Middleton’s engagement photo — which was taken candidly, by a radiator, in the enduring glow of a tender and true love.” But then, reading more, I reconsidered my position.
At the Times, Jenna Wortham outlines the benefits of tracking one’s cycle digitally. In an era dominated by quantitative apps, she writes, “nothing has been as exciting or revealing as tracking my menstrual cycle.” Essentially, what a period-tracking app does is allow you to follow what’s going on in your own body — allowing you to “make informed choices about having sex (or avoiding it),” helping to plan pregnancies and allowing women to keep track of symptoms like mood fluctuations or headaches. All of this is totally useful and great and perfect for a lazy human, such as myself, who would like to get in touch with her own body in the way the requires the least amount of effort possible. You can do it while your Candy Crush lives recharge!
I am down with the period app. But also, being a millennial, I also know a thing or two about apps — while I agree that the technology is useful, I also recognize that it’s nothing to sext home about. Thus, here are some suggestions on how to make the genre really catch on:
Institute a rewards system
Visualizing your period in this way sort of turns it into the world’s worst advent calendar: for three weeks you receive nothing, and then you get discarded bits of uterine lining for seven days straight. Lame. Period apps should do this thing where they reward you for keeping track of your cycle by letting you unlock virtual prizes when you are menstruating. Here are some suggestions: any bit of media pertaining to a loving and enduring friendship between a teenager and a horse, an Enya music video, a .gif of elephants hugging, Justin Bieber’s mug shot with a wacky hat Photoshopped onto it.