To be honest, this was the most annoying app I’d had to use. Eve’s target audience appears to be .. pubescent cis girls? I thought I would like Eve. I really did. The icon looked sleek, minimal, and classy. Upon downloading it, I wondered if it would replace Clue as my go-to recordkeeping chart of gore. Unfortunately, it was nothing like I expected. I like a more streamlined, minimalist approach that's not too girly, and Eve seems to embrace an overwhelmingly enthusiastic woo-girl aesthetic that is liberally-sprinkled with pop-culture gifs, peppy graphics and a manic cheerfulness that makes me feel like the designers were rather cheerfully smashed while making these choices.
The interface is a bit cluttered with "Daily Gems," "Eve Moments," and ads for stuff you can pay for. Exciting. Initially, I couldn't figure out how to add any information about my actual period, until I realised there was a little + button in the lower right corner of the screen, camouflaged in the clutter of the ads. Eve offers a wide variety of symptoms to record, and the images are quite humorous, if moderately offensive to trans, non-binary or otherwise gender-fluid folks. You can track your exercise, mood (if you regularly feel FOMO during your cycle, this may be the app for you), vaginal discharge, and whether you had sex. The sex icons are all of cutesy fruit, with "banana-free" and "all me" options. And this is about as progressive as it gets. Other graphics depict slender, feminine bodies and lady panties, lipsticked mouths on backgrounds made up of tiny peace signs and hearts, stuff like that. Eve also explains logged symptoms in a useful, if slightly irritating best-girlfriend way that I've never encountered from any of my actual friends. "You're feeling calm, girl!" Eve enthusiastically sings. "There isn't anything wrong with knowing your body, girl!" it tells me as I log my incidence of clear cervical fluid. Suddenly, I felt like I was in highschool, but not real highschool. The highschool you read about in Sweet Valley High books or see depicted in High School Musical.
All of this isn't necessarily bad if particularly girlish cis ladies are your target audience, but when you select something from the health log, it isn't added to your cycle record. Instead, it just sort of sits there, beneath the ads, making the aesthetic even messier. You have to scroll down to even see anything, and you can't see at which point what physical quirk happened unless you actually select the "view trend" option, which tracks that particular symptom in isolation. It does give you a cool little graph detailing the average occurrences of your missing libido (signified by a pair of granny panties), but the fact that the representation of your actual cycle doesn't show this irks me.
And your cycle? Where do you view that?
Good question, surprisingly. It took some searching, but eventually I found it, hidden among the Gems (more on those later). It's a circular layout with periods indicated in red and the fertile window in green. What's rather nice is that the interior of the circle flashes handy updates like a ticker-tape, like your chances of getting pregnant on the present day and when your next period is due. There is also an option to view it calendar-style, which is also rather useless in terms of visually tracking symptoms other than periods. If this doesn't matter to you, then that's cool. I just don't get why it's not better integrated with the aesthetic in a more intuitive and user-friendly way, instead of having all the details dumped at the bottom of the home page as if tacked on like an afterthought. It feels like the functionality of the app has been impeded by these design choices -- why offer these options if you can't integrate them more seamlessly?
But wait! Eve has additional functions to make up for the dysfunctionality of its actual functions! Introducing Eve Gems. The Gems are cute little quizzes and informative guides about sexuality, anatomy, and health that occasionally keep me occupied while I pee. Continuing the pop-culture focus and all-round enthusiasm of the app, the Gems are peppered with emojis and relevant gifs that (I presume) are meant to make you feel like you're interacting with a media-savvy friend. A media-savvy friend who is inexplicably interrogating you on sex-lingo and "Vag TLC." Oh wait, that one's not free. Yes, you can pay for additional Gems for topics such as Guy Psych, Tease Him, Period Survival. So, cisgender heteronormativity? You bet.
Like the recent Clue update, Eve has a community option which allows you to interact with other people using the app, and there's an emphasis on sharing "Moments" (like cycle updates, photos, Gem scores) with IRL friends as well. While I wrote in my Clue review that I didn't really understand this function, I checked out the Glow Community forum and actually felt ... uplifted? Perhaps due to the cis-centric nature of the design, users feel free and safe to let their lady-sides loose, generally in positive ways. "Post your most recent photo that makes you feel confident!!" one user says, and below is a flurry of women and girls posting images of new haircuts, Snapchat-filtered selfies, in-progress workout shots, and flawless eye-makeup. One soldier uploads an image of her pulling a silly face, in full uniform, after graduating in her training programme. Below are comments from others saying wow, your eyes are so blessed, OMG you're beautiful, damn, you cute AF. Wow. Gorgeous. Stunning.
Other forum topics include reaction images to use if a guy you don't have that relationship with asks for nudes, moms posting updates on the fruits of their fifteen-hour labour, feminist rants, advice on your sexual debut, reviews of menstrual cups and just ... girls being girls, helping girls, and building a community together. It was amazing, to be honest.
And, finally, one person complained at the trans-exclusionary nature of the app. The user was a transman detailing his struggles in finding a period tracker that didn't mess with his dysphoria, and many users commented expressing their sympathy. One even suggested he switch to Clue instead, and the developers even commented on the post, acknowledging the discrepancy in their design. Who knows if anything will change, but maybe that dude ended up switching to a non-triggering alternative as advised by a friendly community member. Which is great. We're all here to help each other out, guys.
Yes, this is cute and all, but lest we forget, all those gifs and quizzes require data data. If you don't mind Eve sending you near-daily notifications to check out new Gems and limit flipping through the forums, you might not be too irritated by this.
You'll love Eve if:
- You want a tracker with a community focus
- You are cis/het and enjoy a more feminine aesthetic
- You are regularly in a WiFi area that allows you to use all the features
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