This article was originally written for the COMM720 Theories of New Media course by Erkan Saka at Istanbul Bilgi University.
In this study, I intend to explore the proposition of ‘public intimacy’—disrupting the relationship based on a rigid dichotomy between intimacy and the public sphere found in Kornelia Hahn’s 2024 article Intimacy and the Transformation of the Public Sphere—in conjunction with period-tracking applications. This article prompted me to reconsider the argument that constantly occupies my mind regarding period apps—“they profit from our bodies by taking our data and selling it to third-party companies”—alongside the question of what intimacy and publicness signify in the digital age. The instrumentalization of the female body, whether as an indicator of modernization in the Republican era or as a spectacle (or object of the gaze) within a patriarchal structure, re-emerges in the digital age within period apps. While discussing the changing meanings of intimacy and publicness in the digital age through period apps, I aim to analyze the application and its users as an integrated whole.
Period-tracking apps afford users the opportunity to keep a diary regarding their genital health in the digital realm. The 18th-century practices of letter writing and diary keeping by Habermas, referenced by Hahn (Hahn, 2024, p. 45), have migrated to digital platforms. Diaries, which began with the human need to express one’s own feelings and thoughts, and period-tracking apps, which today respond to women’s desire to track their own cycles, were born as a result of similar crises (read ‘crisis’ here as a situation where existing equipment and technology fail to respond, driving one to create something new).
There are also period-tracking apps that do not share data with third-party companies. This fact was particularly pleasing to me. The communities found within these apps are ideal environments for strangers to share ideas within the context of a common topic, and for humans to establish a solidarity-based bond with people experiencing similar problems or seeking information on that subject by sharing their own experiences. Hahn addresses this subject drawing on Simmel. A multitude of impersonal relationships has stimulated an interest in distant places and times beyond modern individuals’ immediate experience and created a heightened imagination (Hahn, 2024, p. 48). Through these communities, the reduction of distance has enabled the establishment of a certain proximity, yet the exercise of power by one individual over another has been prevented (via various in-app rules).
When viewed from a Habermasian perspective, the information sharing that takes place in these communities aligns with the notion that diaries and letters were written with the idea that they would be read by others. The person using the period-tracking app knows that while entering her symptoms and period dates into the app, this information can be accessed by the people founding and managing the app, as well as by other users. This situation gives her confidence; she experiences a feeling of receiving care, thinking “there is someone tracking my cycle and warning me on my behalf.” (In any case, a person who thinks their data is being stolen would not continue to use that app. Which was indeed the case for me.)
Both the period-tracking apps themselves and the communities within them enter the dyadic relationship (in Simmel’s terms: the dyad) between the body and the person’s thoughts as a third eye. This third eye creates a ‘potential public.’ During the time I used it, the Flo app had a health assistant who claimed it could analyze my symptoms (of course, it did this for a fee). Furthermore, the sharing of symptoms in the community within Flo would become public information, as it was a message open to interpretation and viewable by many people. The possibility of period-tracking apps creating a ‘potential public’ is a typical example of ‘public intimacy.’
Another reason underlying the confidence provided by the publicization of intimacy and the feeling of receiving care is the user’s sense that she is caring for her body by recording this data. Contrary to damaging the user’s intimate relationship with her body, intimacy is reconstructed thanks to and within these applications. Instead of feeling like her privacy is being violated, she views the app as a way to possess a ‘healthy’ body, and only those using this app (especially if data is not shared with third-party companies) can see the recorded information.
Finally, I would like to use the threefold historical scheme Hahn established for weddings for period-tracking apps. But first, I will explain these three historical events: in the pre-modern period, the wedding was a public act that had to be performed in front of witnesses for the marriage to gain legitimacy. With modernity, marriage entered the control of the church and state and became standardized. Today, however, weddings have turned into a performance called the ‘white wedding’ (Hahn, 2024, 50-53). In period-tracking apps, users sharing their own symptoms and period dates in communities resembles the first period Hahn mentions, while some users not sharing their information in communities (and even user period data not being sold to third-party companies) bears similarities to the second period. In the second period, algorithms take the place of the physical crowd of spectators. In the third period, advertisements served by period-tracking apps on social media networks, videos regarding period-tracking apps published by influencers, as well as interface designs in these apps (use of the color pink, icons regarding conditions like blood/underwear/pregnancy, etc.) turn the user’s data entry regarding her own body into a performance. As stated in Hahn’s article, intimacy takes on a public form, and the users of these apps, rather than worrying about this situation, enjoy their publicized intimacy.
So, why did I stop using Flo? Chatting with people who had similar concerns to mine in the forums might have been pleasant, of course, but I did not like my data being shared with third-party companies. As someone who uses social media networks very effectively, I did not want information belonging to my body to become part of a publicized intimacy as well.
REFERENCES
Hahn, K. (2024). Intimacy and the Transformation of the Public Sphere. Theory, Culture & Society, 41(7–8), 41–56. https://doi.org/10.1177/02632764241299390