Women’s health has been historically misunderstood and under-researched. Over the centuries, there’s been a long-held belief that understanding how the health concerns of men could simply be transferred to a woman. Treating men as the default led to huge gaps in our understanding of women’s health, particularly for BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and low-income women. While it took too long for science to realize women aren’t mini-men, we’re starting to close that gap. It’s only in the last few decades that we’ve started to acknowledge that sex and gender impact health, nutrition, prevention, diagnosis, and even treatment and these can all be different depending on whether you’re a man or a woman.
Body Language is Seeker’s latest series diving into the world of women’s health, and their bodies. It explores overlooked and misunderstood health issues — from the menstrual cycle and birth control to the vaginal microbiome and the pelvic floor — and underscores the need to close the gap in medical information and research related to women's health. Utilizing expert interviews with women in science paired with fun narration and animations, Body Language helps audiences discover how women’s bodies work, how they’re treated, and frankly, why they’re medically so misunderstood. Our goal with the series was to increase Seeker’s audience of women and really ‘own’ and advance women’s health content for the next generation.
The health gap has meant many women don’t know how to talk about their own health and anatomy. There are not many resources for this kind of discourse, so our strategy was to lean into ‘white space’ in women’s health content specifically aimed at Gen-Z and Millennial women. Body Language is unique in being a women’s health series that is not just for women, and we feel these subjects are beneficial for everyone to learn about and understand.
Body Language is a relatable science show about women’s health, diving into topics that haven’t been covered in digital media. Seeker helps share personal stories to illustrate the idea that people experiencing certain health issues aren’t alone, and interviews subject experts to help put everything into perspective. The series has a casual and positive tone, along with compelling and fresh visuals, that help make it enjoyable to watch, even when talking about subjects that some audiences may be uncomfortable with.
Hosted by Maren Hunsberger, a microbiologist and science communicator, Body Language helps audiences of all ages discover how female bodies work, how they’re treated and the biases and lack of investment that have led to them being so medically misunderstood. Each week, Hunsberger sits down with a different science expert to dive deep into topics that are commonly misrepresented. Each episode also comes with additional online resources on the topic of the week, allowing audiences to deepen their knowledge and understanding of the various issues covered throughout the series.
In the first episode of the series, Hunsberger speaks with Dr. Sarah Temkin, Oncologist & Associate Director of Clinical Research at the NIH Office of Women’s Health, about why it’s important to study women’s health. The two dive deep to look into the context behind the health gap, the impact it’s had on women’s health outcomes, and what’s being done to rectify it today.
In another episode, “Uncovering the Magical Microbial World of the Vagina,” Seeker gives a crash course on the world of the vaginal microbiome. Hunsberger is joined by special guest Hana Janebdar, Founder of Juno Bio, a home test kit for women wanting to get a better understanding of their vaginal microbiome while also contributing data to further research into women’s health. The two discover the incredible diversity of microorganisms that live in the vagina and how important they are for everyday health and how we need more information on this incredible microbiome.
A challenge while working on the series was having to overcome an audience largely consisting of men and building viewership among women from the ground up. The STEM field has historically been dominated by men, and it was imperative that our host and rotating guests were all women who could share their knowledge and have important conversations about various women’s health issues.
We set out to create an informative, entertaining and inclusive women’s health series aimed at Gen-Z and Millennials with a distribution strategy that met our target audience on the platforms where they’re at. Since we launched Body Language in 2021, women have consumed 10M minutes of health-related content on Seeker, and women's viewership of health content on Seeker's YouTube channel jumped +13% YoY. In addition, Seeker has garnered 23M more views from women across priority platforms including Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook YOY. Our women viewers are also 38% more likely to be health-conscious and 486x interested in mental health & wellness content.
These results show that Seeker has been effective at reaching and retaining an audience that is leaned-in to learning more about women’s/female-bodied health. In the interest of progressing the conversation about women’s health, our efforts to also engage our audience of men with this topic has also paid off with almost 40% of views on Snapchat coming from men.
Body Language has driven viewership among women and awareness about topics that are seldom discussed. There is clearly an appetite for it too, with over 2.2M minutes watched and 26M views on Snapchat alone. The series has also opened up partnerships with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society® (LLS), sponsorship opportunities with Clorox and a potential book deal. We’re also immensely proud of the innumerable comments we’ve received for Body Language, thanking us for our coverage and making content requests so we can cover even more ground.
