When Peanut approached us to create a collection of medical illustrations targeted towards women’s healthcare, we had to pinch ourselves to make sure we weren’t dreaming. Historically speaking, visualizations in healthcare have predominantly shown “normal” white, athletically built, young, male and female anatomy – an act that completely disregards the full range of diversity that exists in reality. The true reality is that there is no normal.
Peanut is an app and social network that connects women who are at similar stages of life to each other – from fertility, pregnancy and motherhood through menopause. Together with Peanut, we sought to tackle the issue of diversity and inclusion in representation within medical illustrations. Representation in medical illustration is crucial as it helps educate not only the public but also our healthcare providers on how medical conditions impact women differently – from how c-section scarring appears differently on different skin tones to jaundice in babies of different ethnicities.
