Domesticating the period-tracking app in everyday life : a case study of Easy Period in the Chinese context

Abstract: Recent years have seen great changes to Chinese women’s period-tracking practice, shifting from the method of pen and paper to smartphone applications, and from women-only practice to practice involves men. This study explores such transformations by looking at a specific app named Easy Period in China and users practice with it by using qualitative methods (textual analysis and semi-structured interviews). This study is informed by two theoretical frameworks: gender script to explore contemporary social and cultural imagination of its users, and domestication theory to study users’ motivations and practices. Notwithstanding the exploration of the app, this research identifies itself as a contribution to the field of audience research. This study finds that the female body in the app is imagined as a fragmented, abnormal, emotionally unstable, and vulnerable body that needs constant care from men. However, such scripts are negotiated by the users. Women have various motivations and use the app in diverse ways depending on their own situations. Their usage is also a negotiation between traditional Chinese medical culture and the dominant scientific way of knowing and doing. Also, it is found that female users and male users use the app differently. In contrast to the diverse motivations and usage of the female users, male users are mainly using it to perform and maintain an ideal boyfriend or husband identity. This research is conducted against a background when the first wave of digital menstrual activism in mainland China emerged in February 2020 as a result of the covid-19 crisis. Therefore, it also aims to investigate women’s agency, especially their agency in transforming the period stigma, when using such tracking apps. It is found that women demonstrate their reflexivity and agency when engaging with Easy Period in different ways, but it is still too early to say they are consciously resisting menstrual stigma in their everyday life.