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How period trackers have changed girl culture

well.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#61

Post by xyzzyz »

klausa wrote: post #28

>It's not unlike the stigma behind a completely natural and necessary (...) which is defecation. Yeah! And as we all know, girls are in general, just /gross/. There is no such stigma around shitting. Have you really never heard people joking what happens after they eat Taco Bell or similar foods? People don't talk about particulars of shit they take - but it's not a complete taboo. But seriously - those two are nothi…

> There is no such stigma around shitting. Have you really never heard people joking what happens after they eat Taco Bell or similar foods? People don't talk about particulars of shit they take - but it's not a complete taboo.

I've heard girls talking about their periods much more often than talk about their dumps, so no, I don't think taboo for menstruation is bigger.

> But seriously - those two are nothing alike and comparing them in such way shows that you haven't given it any real thought.

Nothing alike? At the very least, both are discharges from the crotch area, and both are disposed of in or around toilet. Both require sanitary accessories, and both can signal your health. I probably haven't given menstruation as much thought as you, Janusz, however I don't understand why you're so aggresive about it.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#62

Post by pavornyoh »

onion2k wrote: post #41
eveningcoffee wrote: post #8

As the app mentioned is free, I would deduce that they try to turn the data about their users cycle into a monetary value. Is there research how certain periods of the cycle would affect women shopping behaviour (or behaviour in general)? I am asking this to understand how much value is in such information. Perhaps there are other aspects I am overlooking?

As the app mentioned is free, I would deduce that they try to turn the data about their users cycle into a monetary value. There are good reasons why people might want to make this sort of app beyond selling the data. There's a huge potential for health care service providers - if women don't need prescription drugs or appointments to see their doctor, and any other medical issues are resolved more easily because the…

if women don't need prescription drugs or appointments to see their doctor, and any other medical issues are resolved more easily because there isn't the problem of the drugs interacting with the pill, then that represents a vast saving in the cost of supplying services.

This exactly. The app. I use is called the Pink Pad and free. I have been using it since 2011. Since then, I have stop taking the pill. There are no ads just very straight forward. It tells you fertile days and other things. Since that time, it has been off on certain days as that is my fault for not getting to properly note things. But it has been very spot on.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#63

Post by Udo »

blub wrote: post #56
Udo wrote: post #16

To someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s like me, this seems like a strange regression in some ways. The overwhelming majority of girls were on the pill pretty much when they became sexually active, and when I look at my age group right now, that's still the case to this day. The pill was considered normal, safe, and liberating. Many said their menstrual problems were greatly reduced, and of course there was a compl…

There's a group of women who have all sorts of ugly side-effects from taking the pill. It has its pros and cons like everything.

Just because some people suffer from side effects doesn't mean it's a bad option for everyone. Both medically speaking and from a maintenance point of view, the pill is still a good default for most women.

Cultural support may have dwindled into nothingness by now (especially in the US), but every single woman using it that I talked to said she enjoyed the amount of control it gave her and that it greatly increased her quality of life.

I can't imagine those who already know this measure of comfort and control would react positively to "hey, we'll take this away from you, but here, have a period tracker app in exchange". I realize it's a controversial hypothesis, but I suspect the market for period tracker apps is so large because the majority of women don't have access to, or even factual knowledge about, the alternative due to mostly cultural reasons.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#65

Post by marrs »

jacquesm wrote: post #51
marrs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What societies are those?

http://www.come-and-hear.com/editor/america_3.html For instance.

Not having any experience with orthodox Judaism, it's hard to put those passages into context.

It's rather hard to decide what to make of that page. It seems to have an agenda, though I'm not sure I understand what it is.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#66

Post by mkaziz »

golergka wrote: post #58
yumptonpa wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many said their menstrual problems were greatly reduced, and of course there was a completely reliable schedule that came with it.

Thanks, I can read. My point is, while this might be a desirable side-effect, this is not the reason women are on the pill.

Actually, a lot of women who have really bad periods sometimes specifically go on the pill to reduce their intensity. Source: friends in med school who have gone through their ob-gyn rotations.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#67

Post by yumptonpa »

Udo wrote: post #30
yumptonpa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I said it's a culture shift, I didn't mean to pass any judgement. You said it was a 'regression'.

Yes, my personal opinion seeped through a little bit here. If that offended you, so be it.

I never said it offended me - I was just pointing out that you weren't being as non-judgemental as you claimed you were.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#68

Post by briandear »

eveningcoffee wrote: post #8

As the app mentioned is free, I would deduce that they try to turn the data about their users cycle into a monetary value. Is there research how certain periods of the cycle would affect women shopping behaviour (or behaviour in general)? I am asking this to understand how much value is in such information. Perhaps there are other aspects I am overlooking?

It's a safety tool. Imagine the app posting to Facebook in order to warn people of their interactions during this serious time.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#69

Post by zeveb »

golergka wrote: post #29
zeveb wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think it's a good think that the majority of women were resorting to a drug to cope with a normal healthy body function? That's what I've always thought was so odd about the complaint that erectile dysfunction are typically covered by health insurance but contraception may not be: the former fixes a broken body, while the other breaks a functioning one.

"Fixed" and "broken" are defined how the person wants to use his body, not by natural order of things. Otherwise, reaching immortality could be viewed as "breaking" perfectly functioning death meachanism.

> "Fixed" and "broken" are defined how the person wants to use his body, not by natural order of things.

That's an interesting idea, but one which I have to disagree with. A person who wishes to be an amputee does not have a broken body because he has two arms and two legs, nor is his body fixed by severing one or more of them; rather, he has healthy limbs and a broken brain or mind, which may be fixable with particular forms of therapy, or not, but certainly not by destroying his healthy limbs.

> Otherwise, reaching immortality could be viewed as "breaking" perfectly functioning death mechanism.

From what I know of how people age and die it appears that death is the failure and that immortality, were it achievable, is the proper state.

Re: How period trackers have changed girl culture

#70

Post by netcan »

eveningcoffee wrote: post #8

As the app mentioned is free, I would deduce that they try to turn the data about their users cycle into a monetary value. Is there research how certain periods of the cycle would affect women shopping behaviour (or behaviour in general)? I am asking this to understand how much value is in such information. Perhaps there are other aspects I am overlooking?

I think there's a touch of "my adversary is a super-villain" paranoia to the anti-tracking sentiments. I mean Facebook or Amazon get talked about occasionally for being able to predict pregnancies or breakups an monetizing that. But, IMO, it's much overblown. Predctive analytics are not at that point, if they ever will be. The vast majority of ad targeting is a lot simpler than that. It's either common sense understandable (advertise nanny services to people who read parenting magazines) or trial and error. Trial and error is still the more powerful of the two.

FB & Google have the option to scan your site, pick audiences and advertising strategies and run everything on autopilot. it doesn't work very well.

If your strategy is to collect toilet break statistics, user listening habits or some other bit of "data" for a large number of free users than monetize it somehow, good luck.

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