Making the Body Fit the Machine: Women's Embodied and Relational Experiences of Mammography

Mammography is central to early breast cancer detection, yet its embodied and affective dimensions remain underexamined. This study explored how women experience mammography as a sociomaterial encounter between body, machine, and clinical practice. Seventeen women in Israel who had undergone a mammography examination within the previous year participated in open-ended, experience-focused qualitative interviews guided by eight broad questions. The data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Three interrelated themes were developed. Making the body fit the machine captured uneven discomfort arising from whole-body positioning, compression, bodily variability, and technologist-mediated adjustments. Making the breast visible, making the woman recede described how diagnostic isolation could produce fragmentation, exposure, and relational vulnerability, although not all participants experienced objectification. Endurance without endorsement showed that participants strongly affirmed mammography while simultaneously questioning its current embodied form and proposing improvements grounded in experiential knowledge. The findings conceptualize mammography discomfort not as a uniform response or merely a barrier to attendance, but as an outcome of a technologically and relationally structured interface. Continued participation should not be interpreted as satisfaction with existing design. Attending to women's embodied design knowledge may help improve comfort, dignity, and accessibility without diminishing the clinical importance of mammography in breast cancer detection.