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| Common Period Products Image Courtesy of {http://news.planned.org/2016/02/25/the-shocking-evolution-of-period-products/} |
Data Visualizations are probably the first thing the average person thinks of when discussing Digital Humanities. Charts, graphs, word clouds, timelines, and interactive maps can be used in so many ways to highlight important arguments within the humanities and beyond. I chose to experiment with a timeline using TimelineJS. Timelines seem so simple and are easily navigated by the user, but it actually takes a lot of work to create a seamless experience. TimelineJS created an easy-to-follow template for creating a timeline. In the spirit of International Women's Day yesterday, I give you: 100 Years of "Feminine Hygiene." I only created a five-point timeline, so I tried to give just a few highlights in the history of period products in the United States. The link to my timeline can be found HERE, but it is also displayed below.
With this project I was able to marry my fascination with early twentieth century advertisements with women's history. I'm passionate about de-stigmatizing periods and all things women's health-related, so this timeline allowed me to show some of the more bizarre points in the history of period products. How far we've come! A timeline is useful here because it's very visual, and it allows the user to clearly see the big changes in period products over the last 100 years. However, timelines are not very scholarly because there isn't an easy option for citation within the main text area. Also, unless you know code, it is a bit difficult for the average creator to change the style of the timeline - including font, color, sizing issues, etc. I chose to create a timeline because I thought it would be a useful skill to have going into a career in the near-future, and it was a fun little exercise we did in class last week. Overall, I'm happy with how the timeline turned out and I would definitely consider expanding this timeline for my final project, and perhaps learning how to manipulate color and font if I did expand it.
My works consulted for this project can be found below:
http://www.mum.org/
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/period-products-through-the-years/slide/12
https://psmag.com/why-has-it-taken-the-menstrual-cup-so-long-to-go-mainstream-9797b1f76799#.v0faw9uwb
http://menstrualcup.co/who-invented-the-menstrual-cup/
http://divacup.com/products/the-divacup/
100 Years of "Feminine Hygiene"
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