ARTICLE Wearable tech, bodies, and gender Elizabeth Wissinger Department of Social Sciences, City University of New York, Graduate School and University Center and BMCC Correspondence Elizabeth Wissinger, Department of Social Sciences, City University of New York, Graduate School and University Center and BMCC, 199 Chambers Street, New York, NY 10007, USA. Email: ewissinger@gc.cuny.edu Abstract New forms of wearable technology are blurring the lines between technology and bodies, raising questions about personhood, self- hood, and what it means to be human. Consequently, scholars are examining these iterations of body/machine interface and human machine communication from a variety of angles. While fashion scholars focused primarily on garments and celebrating potential techno‐futures, media and communication scholars more critically examined how wearable tech mediates bodies and relationships. Social scientists are concerned with issues of labor, privacy, data ownership, and value, drawing on ethnographic studies of the Quantified Self (QS) community and the phenomenon of self‐track- ing more generally. This scholarship is rooted in studies and theori- zations of ubiquitous computing, feminist science and technology studies (STS), and fashion and dress as both ornament and second skin. Generally, it asks how wearable technology can augment the human body, how it affects human relationships to self and other, and whether wearable technology can promote human autonomy, when it is locked into commercial and power relationships that don't necessarily have the users' best interests at heart. The essay ends by briefly outlining of directions for further research, urging further investigation into wearable tech exhibiting gendered attitudes toward “femme” women, and calling for increased attention to issues raised by wearable technology's coming merger with the growing fields of biotech and synthetic biology. 1 | WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY: GEEK OR CHIC? While 2014, 2015, and 2016 have been declared “the year of wearable technology,” 1 in fact, wearable technology is nothing new. From the pince‐nez to eyeglasses, prosthetic devices, and wristwatches, technology has been worn in many forms. Wearables generally build on this history, but the networked, biosensing, code‐emitting nature of the cur- rent crop of garments and gadgets is unprecedented. 2 While pioneering experiments in human–computer interaction laid the groundwork for today's wearables, the public latched onto the image that emerged from the lab: computer geeks wearing their rigs on their heads. Amidst the cultural recuperation of the terms “nerd” and “geek” wrought by Silicon Valley's influence in the last several decades, wearable tech has explicitly sought to overcome this clunky image. Fashion has attempted to spearhead this trend, but the effort to transition wearables from geek to chic has hit a few Received: 1 March 2017 Revised: 27 July 2017 Accepted: 3 August 2017 DOI: 10.1111/soc4.12514 Sociology Compass. 2017;e12514. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12514 © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/soc4 1 of 14