The Pill
I was standing in the checkout line at Duane Reade, and a woman on the cover of a magazine was sticking her tongue out at me. On her tongue was a pill. New York Magazine just came out with an article that is stirring up a lot of debate, interest, and just plain talk. It’s called “Waking Up from the Pill” and it’s about birth control, fertility, and being a modern woman. It feels important to me.
On the Upper West Side, where I live, there are twins everywhere. And fertility clinics. And middle-aged black women pushing baby carriages with white babies in them. When my friend Erin had a baby at twenty-six, it seemed like she was doing something incredibly radical.
Most of the young women I know aren’t planning on having babies anytime soon. I hadn’t planned on getting married anytime soon either, until I met Bear. In fact, 30 sounded like the right age for most big, scary grown up things in my life to begin.
But according to this article, and to plenty of other sources, fertility declines dramatically at and after 30. It’s that constant dance we women do. That constant relationship we have with our imaginary, potential future selves. Will I regret it later if I don’t have children sooner? Will I regret it later if I do?
The article traces everything to the pill. As though contemporary society revolves around it like a giant wheel. With the pill, women became a lot like men, says Vanessa Grigoriadis. Suddenly we were having sex all over the place, without a second thought. I don’t know. Maybe. But what about STIs? Am I the only one who has always been pretty paranoid? Suddenly we lost touch with our own bodies. We didn’t have any idea what a real period was. Yet we obediently had our simulated ones every month. The blood looks pretty real. And when companies offered us the option of giving up the period entirely we declined. The fake period was comforting. We felt like we were still real women.
I wonder how “in touch” with their bodies women were before the pill was popular. I certainly want as much control of my fertility as possible. But the article also made me think about biology and the way it hangs there, waiting, over my life. Over all of our lives. And I was glad I’d read it. It didn’t make me question the greatness of birth control very much. But it made me think.
Read it here. And let me know what you think!
* * *
Un-roast: Today I love the way I feel like I’m probably extremely fertile, but am perfectly content to wait a while.
Kate on December 3rd 2010 in Uncategorized
Erika @ Health and Happiness in LA responded on 03 Dec 2010 at 9:13 pm #
I have done a lot of thinking about the pill, and trying to figure out which one to take and whether I want to take it at all. Add to that (this is TMI, by the way) that I’ve been off it for 8 months and haven’t had a period the whole time. And I wonder, did the pill mess me up? Or does it make me normal?
And no, you are not the only one who’s still paranoid. STI’s scare the crap out of me!!
Ally responded on 03 Dec 2010 at 9:15 pm #
I’ve been on the pill since I was 15, for migraines. Now that I’m 25, I’m wondering how fucked I am for having been pumping myself full of hormones for the last decade? awesome.
Christin@purplebirdblog responded on 03 Dec 2010 at 9:46 pm #
I too struggle with the pill. Big time. And the fact that I got placed on the Depo shot when I was 18 and stayed there for the bulk of 9 YEARS. How messed up is my shiz now? And I’m damn sure not having a child at this juncture in my life, so I stay on the pill. /sigh
Tabs responded on 03 Dec 2010 at 11:00 pm #
Although I personally opt to not “Pill” (hormones scare me), I’d vehemently support any woman who CHOOSES (i.e. not teenagers forced on it) to take it. We’re all far away from our real “biological” selves, if we’re going to get all technical. I mean, all that corn syrup, all those artificial whatevers, blah blah. – I also think getting positive about our periods is important, because they’re awesome (and we think they’re very, very terrible). We’re not exactly taught to like our bodies, right? 🙂
IN ANY CASE, I feel like this article is bullshit. Because we all (except NYM) know most women are not going around having sex “like men,” with little regard for their own or others’ health. I just don’t understand why products of the women’s movement – still – are questioned all the time, e.g. WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE; ARE THEY ALL GOING TO DIE ALONE BECAUSE THEY MAKE TOO MUCH MONEY AND ALL MEN ARE TOO UNCOMFORTABLE TO DATE THEM? or IS BIRTH CONTROL MAKING LADIES WAIT TOO LONG FOR BABIES AND THEN CRY?
I should say that I haven’t read the piece myself. I don’t know if I can do it. But I read about it on Tiger Beatdown and Slate, and I’m just not convinced. :\
Meri responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 1:03 am #
Ugh. Sore subject. I feel that a lot of women (or girls) are put on the pill for a medical reason, and then end up feeling stuck and like they need to keep taking it so that they don’t have unplanned pregnancies. Is there no better option? I certainly am sick (ha) to death of feeling like a crazy lunatic due to overdosing on hormones every single month. I”ll have to check that article out.
Thanks for bringing it up!
Meri
Tml responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 1:08 am #
I agree with Tabs, I did read the article and found it to be nothing more than a whole lot of fear mongering and complete lack of science. I mean, white mucus, that’s what we’re talking about? What woman isn’t familiar with that?
darryn (brio.gusto) responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 2:07 am #
I think women are pushed into the pill. It’s become an automatic, much like going to college and pursuing a career first is for some of us. I think it’s almost taboo now for a young woman to say she just wants to get married and be a mom.
I was on the pill for 8 years straight, and only this year went off after a shitload of trouble which all seemed to culminate in one three-month period (blog post about it here!: http://briogusto.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/reproductive-rights-or-pharmaceutical-negligence/) . And honestly, I’ve never felt better. What’s more interesting is that I have since developed an intense desire to make babies. Coincidence? I think not.
Eimear Rose responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 4:44 am #
I think the bigger issue here is not the pill, but the guilt attached to delaying having a family. I think it’s worrying that women are experiencing these dilemmas but men don’t seem to. If you decide not to have kids before you’re 30, and then after you’re 30 realise you can’t, well, you really can’t be blamed for that. Better to have no kids at all than to make yourself miserable in your twenties through some notion that you’re not a real woman unless you’re a mother. My partner knows I don’t want children and he is happy with that decision. It’s my female friends who imply it’s somehow unfeeling of me to decide at 24 that children aren’t for me- my male friends don’t offer opinions one way of the other.
AlisonM responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 6:01 am #
I think expanding the discussion about the pill beyond the issue of contraception is good. When you’re 17, the only thing you think about is not getting pregnant. And this article raises the really rather obvious, but nonetheless relevant point that hormonal contraception has implications that go way beyond that. It’s another instance in which women are maligned for not doing the right thing (or doing the right thing, but not in exactly the right way, etc); in which we are subject to different standards to men (the viagra example?); in which we are still inhibited and don’t talk enough, both amongst ourselves, and more publicly (the red carpet event).
For the record, I came off the pill 12 months ago, and have had irregular periods ever since. I was recently diagnosed with polycystic ovaries. I knew that was a possibility. And instead of feeling cheated, or angry, I’m just glad I’m back in touch with my body. Even if it is erratic and gives me monster spots. At 30.
Claire Allison responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 6:39 am #
How can you have a “fake” period? This entire concept that a bodily function is some how less legitimate than another one because of how it’s induced is just bunk. Is a psychotic breakdown less legitimate because the wrong medication made it happen- then say a breakdown caused by outside trauma? I’m aware this isn’t an entirely apt characterization or comparison, logically speaking, but I’m resistant to buy into this reality we’ve composed that women on the pill are less “in touch” then those who aren’t. And I don’t mean to delegitimize the experiences of women who do feel like they lost something from their experiences with the pill- I completely understand that it can alienate you from your reproductive experience. I mean to call the idea of an either/or dichotomy into question, and I mean to question the value, if there is any, of saying something is ‘natural’ at all. Is a period less natural because it happened from a controlled, outside variation in hormones consciously administered? Is there anything essentially different about the experience (possibly less pain if you’re lucky and it works for you that way) that makes it less female? I think establishing these dichotomies that legitimize and delegitimize entire bodily functions and structures based on their “naturalness” are essentially created to establish a win-lose scenario, and the fact is that bodies don’t think in either/or set ups. A body is a complex system of various components, and if we essentialize the mechanics of those components down to one or the other then we’re failing to recognize our own complexities.
As for the value of the pill? I had an interesting conversation with my grandma this summer where she essentially revealed to me that she hates babies and didn’t want them the way my grandfather did, but because contraception was illegal in Canada, she had seven children (she was 17-28 during the time of their births, and I have no idea what she did to get the births to stop). She loves her family, but as her only grandchild (of 15) I am the youngest and the best educated, and I think she revealed this secret to me because she recognizes that I am unlikely to have children (and also terrified and completely incompetent around babies). So when I read this idea about it being ‘unnatural’ for your body to think it’s pregnant for 10 years, I don’t really get on board with that, because women like her often were pregnant for ten years, and I’m not sure this issue of ‘real’ vs. ‘fake’ in terms of biology and chemistry is really an applicable system of thought. Could we benefit from a little more care to how we approach it? Certainly. I’ve had doctors throw it at me as a cure-all for all my ailments. However it makes me fucking insane, so I’ve come to a point where i approach most new doctors with the phrase “and don’t even think of telling me to go on the pill because it makes me fucking crazy and I’m not going down that road again.” But, who is to say that pregnancy can’t or won’t make me insane as well? And if it does, will that somehow be more legit than my pill experience of insanity?
I think I’m still working through this…
San D responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 8:08 am #
I think men and women have sex for different reasons, and throw individuality of the person into the mix, and the reasons move to another level, so to say the “pill” liberated women to become men in that regard is absurd. The “pill” does offer options for many things from birth control to hormone regulation, and also comes with warnings, which should be discussed with your doctor. As for when to have children, you will know, just like when you knew you were in love. My husband and I decided at one point not to have children because we weren’t satisfied with how the world was going and didn’t want the responsibility and the sorrow of having our child inheriting that scenerio. Then, we knew. We thought, this is how it always will be, and children can be the ones to change the world. And that one instance, that one thought saved my life. In delaying trying to have children, I found I couldn’t. The fertility specialist in doing tests verified the unthinkable. I had ovarian cancer. In the “trying” I was saved, but without a child in the end. Like all things in life, the road is paved with twists and turns. I often wonder had I had children when I was young if I would be like my sister, who is now a proud grandmother. I often wonder if our bodies are genetically predisposed to have children at a certain age threshold, and then when that window of opportunity is closed, the chances are greatly diminished. If that be so and certain, the idea of having children, if that is the decision, should be carefully considered when one is healthy, young, in love, and ready.
Kate responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 9:53 am #
@Tml
Are you saying sarcastically or seriously “what woman doesn’t know about white mucus?” Because I definitely didn’t. And I’m pretty sure plenty of women don’t.
And also, I’m not interested in monitoring my cervix. I know that probably sounds terribly “out of touch” with my body, but it’s nice to have an option that’s more comfortable for me.
One of the things I thought was interesting about the article was that it identified the “back to our bodies” tendency in my generation and people a little older than me. And I’m seeing that response here, in the comments. Of course, since the commenters are smart and critical, it’s mixed in with disgust at the bad journalism out there. 🙂
Kate responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 9:57 am #
@Claire Allison
I love this comment. I wish this comment was part of the post. Thank you for talking about “real” and “fake” so thoughtfully and intelligently.
Cindy responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 4:13 pm #
I can’t even bring myself to read your link (sorry)…I’ve had such issues with doctors peddling the pill…doctors pressuring me to have a baby before I hit 31 because I’ll have a baby with Down’s and how awful would that be…doctors acting as if the pill is the equivalent to oxygen.
GAH!
I lived on the pill my entire young life. from 18 until I met my now husband. I spent years nauseous and not feeling right. I fought it…begged doctors for help. begged my then husband to let me get off it.
but starting a family before we (meaning he) was ready would ruin his life. We had to have a house, and he had to have it all figured out. I just wanted to be a mom and raise a family. But instead I got to live on the pill and follow HIS plan.
it didn’t mess up my 23 year old fertility as we easily had my now teenage son, but before I had my first post delivery check up the doc and husband were peddling my return to the pill.
I hated it.
me and hormones not created by my own body did not mix at all.
I will say this. the ex husband’s plan was to have a 5 year spread between our 2 kids and I waited patiently but was so depressed at the long wait. I was a full time working mom depressed my 8 week old baby had to go to full time day care but loved the motherhood part of my life. It’s just in me to nurture kids. The one thing that came easy for me and i still love my hardest job.
the marriage was quickly declining and he started acting VERY VERY odd and controlling (more than ever) and I snuck myself back on the pill after beginning to “try” for one month. It was the only time I appreciated being sick all the time. I filed for divorce before I found myself trapped and pregnant again. Before I gave him another child to bully, ignore and neglect.
Best use of the pill ever.
I stayed on it because I had always been on it and doctors pressured me since I was “single” and obviously didn’t want to get pregnant now.
a few years later I met my now husband and I got an IUD. We needed to wait but by the time our life simmered down (from family court battles and the financial ruin that followed) it was not 5 years between my children but 14. I was 37 when I got pregnant with my toddler. It took me 2 years and 2 miscarriages and I was not on the pill, hadn’t been for years. Even fertile myrtle me had issues with getting and staying pregnant after 35. Was the hardest period of my life but he’s here now, husband handled our birth control from here on out (because a second IUD caused me horrible pain monthly) and now I can just let my body be.
all I know is that doctors PUSH birth control. Even my fertility doctor (the doctor I was seeing to help me get pregnant) couldn’t help herself and every time I saw her she tried to prescribe the pill….I was so so so so pissed.
My heart goes out to you all. It’s a different time since when I was 20 and wondering when I would have a family and how.
my issues were different but it’s never easy.
fear mongering articles just make my skin crawl.
xo
Just Josie responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 8:09 pm #
I think the article is bullshit. Obviously I would say that pre-Pill women had a lot more at stake involving sex (i.e. unwanted pregnancies), but it’s entirely fallacious to state that the Pill “liberated women to have sex ‘like men'”. I reject the notion that men and women have sex for entirely different reasons — that’s wholly insulting to both genders. Both men and women have sex for the sake of love and sex just to get off and sex for whatever other reason they feel like having sex for.
I struggle with ethical issues regarding the Pill not because of religion or anything like that, but because as a vegan, I have a guilty conscience concerning taking ANY medication that is not absolutely necessary for my survival on this earth. (I take no medications. Ever. Not that I can’t understand how one might need to do so.) BUT the second I think I might be having sex in the near future, I will be getting on the Pill. I consider not getting pregnant ever absolutely vital and as such the Pill is justifiable. Unfortunately, there’s not yet a vegan BC pill, and I’ll have to deal with that. There are, however, vegan condoms — thank goodness! (How gross are sheepskin and milk deratives in a condom, for Pete’s sake?!) There’s also a natural way of regulating these things, but I’m entirely suspicious of it: basically, you check the temperature of your discharge before engaging in coitus, and if it’s a certain temp, there’s an increased probability of getting pregnant, so you abstain. Lol. I can totally see myself either doing that wrong, or the awkwardness of being like, “Hold on just a sec, honey, I have to go see how hot I am! … Oh, sorry, too hot, just go to sleep!” I mean, REALLY.
I don’t really attach any sentimentality to sex either, and some people will infantilize me by saying that that’s a product of society, but I don’t believe it is at all. And even if it IS, it’s not been for me, because I personally have had to grow up in an assbackwards, sexually repressive, victim-blaming, slut-shaming, puritanical, anti-choice, religiously-tainted corner of Indiana. If I’m in love the first time I have sex, fine. But if I’m having sex just to have sex? Then I’m pretty okay with that too.
Too, I’m both completely intrigued by the concept of fertility and totally disinterested in it. I mean, ancient fertility idols and pouches and such things fascinate me. I’d honestly be extremely disappointed if I have HIGH fertility, because I have a adamantly anti-reproduction viewpoint. We have no right to bring more people into the world. The environment can barely sustain all of us now as it is, and when there are 40,000 children dying each and every day from starvation and countless others enduring unthinkable abuses because they’ve got no home to go home to, or no money… then we really just need to stop.
In closing, something I’ve noticed a lot, both with people in general and patronizing male doctors (but especially with the doctors), is the infantilization of young women who don’t want to have [their “own”] kids. And I’m not alone; I’ve heard the same kind of stories from other young women whom don’t want any children. When I was sick the other day, I was discussing with my doctor how I wanted to get sterilized as soon as possible, and he told me that most doctors wouldn’t think twice about giving a young man a vasectomy, but they would find it “unethical” to sterilize a young woman at such a young age. He said that the youngest would typically be 30, and some would wait even longer, because the woman will “invariably change her mind and have children”. I find that so offensive, genuinely I do. I believe with all my heart that reproduction is wholly unethical, I am more than capable of exercising self-control, I know for a fact that I do not want any children, I’m willing to pay for the operation at some point in future, and I don’t want to run the risk of passing on scoliosis to a kid, yet I would be refused this operation, simply because I have a vagina, which means apparently that I am indecisive and baby-crazy (and I just haven’t realized it yet, I guess). And should I get the operation, I’ll be somehow “less real” as a woman and some kind of “baby-hater” mutant-lady.
My apologies for the length — I feel very strongly about this!
Un-roast: I have awesome legs. They’re really long, and skinny but muscular, and obviously a dancer/runner’s. That, and they’re hairy. Stickin’ it to the man, yeah! 😉
Just Josie responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 8:19 pm #
Incidentally, I am by no means saying that anyone should be forced to take the Pill, but I maintain that we have no place reproducing. Though I’m only fifteen, there are people with whom I could have had sex with already (not that surprising, I guess). But I’ve decided, for the time being, to remain celibate until I know definitely in which way I plan to protect myself from potential STDs and unwanted, unethical pregnancies.
Anna responded on 04 Dec 2010 at 8:52 pm #
The article got the Fertility Awareness Method wrong. It isn’t necessary to actually look inside at the cervix, just to periodically note during the day the consistency of the mucus and all that takes is a wipe from the outside.
To some extent, I think the pill is related to trends among women to treat their periods as gross or shameful.
And because I want to share:
http://www.scarleteen.com/article/body/i_being_born_woman_and_suppressed
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2010/09/25/re-framing-menstruation/
I guess I see the pill as just another way to control the female body and sexuality.
Josie responded on 05 Dec 2010 at 1:31 am #
I guess I see the pill as just another way to control the female body and sexuality.
===
It is, in a way. But isn’t the alternative (NOT having any control over when you reproduce) equally if not more oppressive?
Noel responded on 05 Dec 2010 at 8:11 pm #
There’s been a lot of great talk here about women and men and how they have sex and who they have sex with and when they decide to get married and to have or not to have kids — rightfully so. But one thing I just want to bring up is the children–I wonder how the pill affects children (not physically, but in terms of growing up and emotional development), given that their parents are able to decide when and where and how many of them there will be?
I don’t know if there’s an answer to that question yet. But when I think about my decision to wait for children, I know I’m taking a risk. But I make it anyways because I know I’m not ready to be the kind of mother I want to be. Not yet.
Sandy responded on 06 Dec 2010 at 6:23 pm #
If you want real information on this issue, I highly recommend The Pill, by Alexandra Pope. Sobering. And hopeful 🙂
Sandy responded on 06 Dec 2010 at 6:23 pm #
Which is a book, by the way – LOL.
Annie responded on 07 Dec 2010 at 12:36 pm #
I have to say, the original article was very interesting to me, so I have been seeking blog posts about it (and even wrote my own: http://www.realmommychronicles.com/?p=781 ).
Your response to it is actually one of the most measured and in turn your readers’ comments are the most thoughtful I have seen, as well.
Perhaps Vanessa Grigoriadis made too strong of a connection between The Pill and infertility later in life. (Kind of like those statistics that say things like, “Families that eat dinner together are less likely to have children that do drugs.” It’s not necessarily the ACT of consuming food together that prevents drug use, there are a myriad of other factors that happen to overlap in families that also eat dinner together.) But I do see a correlation between women who are informed enough to get on birth control, then facing a harsh reality when they decide to have children.
Three HUGE facts that should have been acknowledged, even if briefly, are that
1. Not every woman WANTS to have kids and that is okay!
2. Some women want to adopt.
3. It is largely in the upper class that these issues of late-age infertility are occurring. I am not talking about women who struggle with infertility due to medical issues that can occur at any age. I am speaking about women who take birth control in order to hold off pregnancy so that they can pursue other aspects of their life and then decide they are ready to have a baby in their 40’s.
Every woman has every right to make this choice, but I think Grigoriadis is forcing us to admit that it won’t be easy and it won’t always be successful. Many people keep saying that ‘Obviously, women already know that. We aren’t dumb!’ Well, it doesn’t take a ‘dumb’ woman to listen to a doctor tell her she CAN wait, see celebrities having babies at 40, see some of her peers have kids at 40 and think (or maybe want to believe) that it won’t be a problem. In fact, I think that it happens to lots of really smart women.
Tempest responded on 07 Dec 2010 at 1:01 pm #
This past July I went off the pill. I had been on it nearly 14 years, nearly as long as I’ve been married – and I went off of it mainly as a technicality with the prescription (it lapsed before my appt with my new gyn, and the old gyn wouldn’t fill it). I could have started it again, she gave me the Rx, but I just didn’t do it. I’m still considering the changes, and am not sure what is from the lack of the pill and what is from my body sliding into the mid 30’s. Hard to say when I’ve been on it my whole adult life. But I’m pretty damn sure going off of it was the right thing to do, even though I definitely do not want children. There are other ways without impacting my body.