Barbies, Goddesses, and Entrepreneurs: Discourses of Gendered Digital Embodiment in Women’s Health Apps

App designers should increase the diversity of bodies featured in the icons of apps and use descriptors that challenge these harmful normative expectations of health.

This includes those who are unable or choose not to reproduce, those experiencing negative emotions, women exploring sexual health apart from reproduction, women who are not heterosexual, and transwomen – by framing motherhood and female fertility as necessary, joyful, and disconnected from sexual pleasure. This should be avoided.

Health app designers should focus on inclusivity and avoid the emphasis on the need for constant monitoring and improvement of one’s body and self-promotion, which transfers the burden of appropriate care from health providers to the patient, while app vendors make a profit. This is particularly harmful to low-income women, especially women of colour, who are often systematically denied health care and blamed for their poor health.