Self-care Against the Grain: Normative Negotiations in Contraceptive Self-Tracking

Critical sociologists argue that reproductive self-tracking applications (apps) intensify existing norms regarding the female body. Yet, we have little empirical data on how self-care practiced with such apps relates to existing norms regarding the reproductive body in practice. Drawing on data from interviews with and solicited dairies from Dutch app users, I analyze contraceptive self-tracking practices as a form of self-care that renegotiates social norms. This study asks: In their everyday tracking, how do users of contraceptive apps grapple with social norms and expectations surrounding their body? Results reveal that self-care includes practices of attunement to and appreciation of the body that provide strategies to negotiate, navigate, and mitigate social norms and expectations. App users uphold ideals of femininity, the "natural" body, and "natural" cycles while also mobilizing them to thwart other norms and expectations, such as pressure to be productive and the expectation to take hormonal contraception. In what I call strategic nostalgia, users play social norms off each other to shape their lives in meaningful ways. This article aims to deepen understanding of everyday self-care practiced with reproductive self-tracking technologies through a praxiography of self-care that countervails analyses of reproductive self-tracking focused on discourse and app design.