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The Body as an Algorithm: Digital Biopolitics, Embodiment, and Gendered Control in Menstrual Tracking Applications
This article examines how menstrual tracking apps reconfigure the body through digital biopolitics and feminist embodiment theory. Drawing on 14 semi-structured interviews with Russian women aged 18–30, it extends the concept of datafied embodiment to analyse how predictive analytics mediate bodily perception and reproductive practices. The study shows how apps construct a specific mode of bodily knowledge in which menstruation is framed as a manageable cycle visualized through charts, reminders, and symptom logs. While users often engage with apps as tools of emotional reassurance and health management, the findings reveal a paradox of control: menstrual apps offer autonomy and legitimacy to previously devalued bodily states, yet simultaneously reproduce normative ideals of femininity and reproductive responsibility through aesthetic and algorithmic cues. Privacy is negotiated situationally, with users treating cycle logs as relatively low-risk while drawing firmer boundaries around data linked to sexuality and reproductive decision-making. Within a post-Soviet context marked by menstrual taboo, a contested public status for feminism, and tightening reproductive politics, the article argues that FemTech’s promise of empowerment coexists with a tendency to make women individually responsible for monitoring and optimizing their bodies.