“I’ll be like, ‘Maybe I am feeling a little bloated in my face!’”įrom a gynecologist’s perspective, though, these apps do more good than harm. “I think makes me overthink a lot of what’s happening around my fertile window or PMS, because there are so many specific symptoms listed that there’s a weird psychosomatic effect in my brain,” says Nicole Nguyen, a technology reporter at BuzzFeed News who has written about period trackers in the past. Sure, it may be true that PMS makes me irritable and impatient, but must that also mean that my girlfriend isn’t walking annoyingly slowly? While period apps (at least, the ones that I’ve used) don’t actively tell users their feelings aren’t valid or more complicated than PMS, they might contribute to our overestimation of the effects our periods have on our daily lives by suggesting so many potential consequences. I, too, have experienced the righteous indignation of the PMS-haver who wants her maybe-PMS-heightened feelings to be considered legitimate in their own right. I wanted to be like, maybe my boyfriend is just being a dick.” “ made me feel kind of like a mammal, not a human,” said Katie.
And even if that information is technically accurate, that doesn’t mean we necessarily want (or need) to attribute every passing mood or symptom to our biology. Many period apps are designed to highlight the predicted fertile window, PMS window, and menstruation window in various colors and designs, leaving very few days that appear completely untouched by our cycles. “Once I was tracking every week, I stopped feeling like I could trust my feelings, because you’re either PMS-ing or ovulating or on your period,” she said. My friend Katie, also a journalist, told me recently that she’d stopped using her own period-tracker apps because they made her feel too, well, hormonal. And while I’ve found them helpful in knowing when to expect my period - and likewise the PMS that precedes it - I’ve started to wonder whether they might give me a bit too much information in return. On Clue, I only enter data for 8 of the available 31 categories (my partner is a woman, which lets me eliminate a good seven or eight items dedicated to pregnancy and birth control), but still, between both apps, I hand over a lot of information. I downloaded the app immediately, and instead of using it as a replacement for Pink Pad, I began using both. Clue also provides a truly comprehensive array of data-collection options, offering users the option to track up to 31 possible categories, including cravings, digestion, hair, skin, emotions, motivation, sex, and, somewhat curiously, one called “party.” For one thing, it wasn’t immediately obvious as a period app, ambiguous in name and avatar design (most period apps, including Pink Pad, are both very pink and very obvious). At the time, I used an app called Pink Pad to track my own period, but I eavesdropped with interest as these women extolled Clue’s many superior virtues. About a month ago, I was at a party listening to some women I didn’t know very well evangelize their favorite period tracking app, Clue.
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