In the realm of women's health, discussions often tend to conflate aesthetic issues such as bad breath, weight gain, rashes, acne or vaginal odours with health issues. Josephine Ornago, OutspokenPR discusses the effects of "bikini medicine".
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Pink soft tissue in the form of female genital organs, vulva and labia, vagina concept with delicate flower. High quality photo
As a result, when there are underlying health issues they tend to be treated cosmetically, women are encouraged to not investigate but to try and plaster over problems with the aid of trendy diets, cosmetics, deodorants and other tools that may temporarily diminish symptoms but do nothing to tackle root causes and may even occasion additional side-effects (think of vaginal deodorants for example). Societal pressures therefore frequently overshadow the critical health issues that women face.
There is of course a root cause for this trend too, and it boils down to the fact that, historically, women have largely been “seen” by medical science rather than shaping it. In a male dominated world, the male gaze determined the health of a female subject, skewing the perception of good health and conflating it with beauty. Equating how women look with how they feel, means that much of the investment concerning women’s bodies is cosmetic rather than medical. Research supports this interpretation and a content analysis spanning 5 years of the 6 highest circulating US women's health magazines revealed that despite the magazines' purported focus on health, the most frequent category of products advertised was appearance-enhancing products. Similarly, a critical discourse analysis of articles from all a range of women’s health magazines published in 2018 revealed that “good health,” was conflated with having a pleasing appearance.
Where proper medical attention has historically been placed for women is mainly around reproductive health and strictly within the confines delimitated by the bikini. So-called “Bikini-medicine”, is in fact the term used to describe medical practices that mistakenly operate in the belief that women’s health only differs from men’s in the parts of the body that a bikini would cover.
Research by the George Institute researchers found that, in 2010, just over one third (36%) of the women’s health content in a sample of journals was focused on reproductive health, and by 2020 this had increased to just under half (49 and 47% for each journal type respectively). But what about older women? What about girls? Or studies into how diseases that do not concern reproductive organs affect the female body?
In fact, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and autoimmune diseases affect women differently than men. Also, noncommunicable diseases are now the leading cause of death and disability for women in most countries, and these were found to be decreasingly covered in women’s health journals.
It seems clear that far from redressing the balance, society and the media are continuing to propose an outdated conflation of health and appearance when it comes to women’s health. Although no longer the object of study that is subject to solely the male gaze, cultural implications mean that even though women are more represented in science and the medical profession, the mores that combine health and beauty continue to remain prevalent.
Communications play a central role in breaking down these barriers and reshaping the narrative surrounding women’s bodies to ensure that suitable treatment is developed and sought by women who, subjected to centuries of objectification, continue to struggle to break free from a narrative that suggests their ailments are ugly, or “gross” and that the problem is to become attractive again rather than actually healthy. By investing in creating a new narrative for women’s health, femtech businesses can foster the environment they need to thrive and grow while transforming mentality surrounding what is and isn’t healthy when it comes to the female anatomy.
