ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 engages with tracking apps used by new mothers – which are mundane, digital and banal – and operate within a relatively closed (or at least it is conceived of as such) digital ecology. Tracking and biosensor apps occur within much more intimate boundaries. These activities are premised on the idea of knowing yourself better – of authenticity, and of a ‘real’ body that is at the heart of data generation and circulation. At the same time, and as I argue, such apps obscure any ‘real’ body both through the dashboard and through the overriding interest which is in and of data. For the women negotiating tracking, self-tracking and fitness apps, the politics of these apps are simultaneously revealed and unevenly accepted and adhered to, even as the tangible power of such data is felt as a lived consequence on their bodies.
