"MUCH MORE THAN TREATING ILLNESSES WITH LITTLE PLANTS": NATURAL GYNECOLOGY AND THE (RE)CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE

Abstract

With an accelerated growth in social networks since 2018, the Natural Gynecology movement advocates female “empowerment” through the knowledge of their own body and the perception of the menstrual cycle. The present work analyzes the speeches of the movement’s influencers in Brazil and Latin America, based on their posts on Instagram® over four years. Using Thematic Content Analysis technique, we seek to understand the perceptions of women, “female body” and therapeutic practices spread by the movement with the mediation of social media, identifying and analyzing these ways of producing health among women, different from those disseminated by biomedicine. Presenting a strong relationship with the self-help movements in the 1970s and 1980s and with popular and traditional practices of care and health, Natural Gynecology defends the idea that any woman can take care of her own health as long as she has access to the tools and information that allow her to do so, spreading the perception of the menstrual cycle as the main way to care for and know herself.