We know curiously little about the first female, Eve: > never heard from her > no data on her life > manufactured from man > was second > is to blame Eve is our foundational concept of a woman, yet she is not legible. Why? For 1,400 years, humanity was confused about planets too. When the ancient Greeks looked up to the sky, they saw some lights (stars) appeared fixed, while other lights (planets) moved erratically. They couldn’t understand why. From their vantage point, Mars would stop, reverse, loop backward, and then resume. Planets were bewildering, called "wanderers". To Greek physicians, the womb was also perplexing. They taught that the womb moved freely, a restless wanderer inside the body. They looked up at the sky, and at a woman, and concluded the same thing: they are erratic and wandering. To resolve this planetary madness, astronomers spent 1,400 years trying to understand. They used complicated models, overlaying circles onto circles (epicycles). Then, Copernicus and Kepler figured it out. Two insights solved over 1,400 years of bad explanations. It turns out the observed was not fixed, and the orbits were ellipses, not perfect circles. Our bewilderment about female health only means it is yet to be understood. There’s a reframe waiting to happen. In the fifth century BCE, Polykleitos sculpted the male body as a system of ideal mathematical proportion. Setting the historical trajectory for the “ideal” body. This passed through Vitruvius and then was immortalized by Da Vinci. This is how the default template of the human body was established. The male body was chosen because it held still, not because it was superior. It lacked the cyclical, "erratic", misunderstood shifts of the female body. Perhaps it's time for another reframe. In the next 90 days, Kate will become the most measured female in history. Three of her menstrual cycles (orbits) will be meticulously tracked. > 1,900 biomarkers tracked > 14.8 million data points > 100 tasks a day > 6-10 hours a day > 50+ devices > brain, taste, smell, and more > 3 menstrual cycles The effort will reveal new insight into female health, though that’s not really the primary objective here. Kate is trying to become legible. First to herself, and then to others.