The Pill

I was always suspicious of it.

When I was in my early twenties my friend Melinda said, "Ovulating is core to my experience as a woman, as a human being. Why would I let a pharmaceutical company fuck with it?" That resonated with me. 

Sex at Dawn on the Pill:

Every woman knows her menstrual cycle can have profound effects on her eroticism. Spanish researchers confirmed that women experience greater feelings of attractiveness and desire around ovulation, while others have reported that women find classically masculine faces more attractive around ovulation, opting for less chiseled-looking guys when not fertile. Since the birth control pill affects the menstrual cycle [preventing ovulation!], it's not surprising that it may affect a woman's patterns of attraction as well. Scottish researcher Tony Little found womens' assessment of men as potential husband material shifted if they were on the pill. Little thinks the social consequences of his finding may be immense: "Where a woman chooses her partner while she is on the Pill, and then comes off to have a child, her hormone-driven preferences have changed and she may find she is married to the wrong kind of man."

Let me say I have no idea how this all works for lesbians (in terms of attraction to men), but it seems that during ovulation women's sense of smell is especially heightened, and (if we are in childbearing years), most women are attracted to the scent of men (or people?) whose major histocompatability complex (MHC) differs from our own. This preference functions to help us select someone with immunities different from our own, so that the offspring benefit from broader, more robust immune systems. Remember the "Sweaty T-shirt Experiment"?

But apparently women taking the Pill didn't show the same responsiveness to the male scent cues. "Women who were using birth control pills chose men's T-shirts randomly or, even worse, showed a preference for men with similar immunity to their own."

I don't know about how the testers could differentiate "random selections" of sweaty t-shirts from selections of t-shirts worn by men who in fact had MHC's that differed just the right amount from the womens' for the offspring to be robust. Just saying. But it does make a case against the Pill. Why fuck with something so core as your primal sense of smell and thus your ability to detect the right match in a mate? You don't want to wake up pregnant and married to a guy who smells wrong.

This may also be a case against antiperspirants. And it's true, I'm against them. Blocking all human odor is just wrong. But I'm for deodorant from Tom's or otherwise made with natural ingredients. Just don't block my pores with chemicals and tiny particles of aluminum. Did anyone say breast cancer?

Also, our smells can tell us if we need to adjust our diets. If deodorant isn't enough to cover up a really strong or bad smell, I have to ask myself, am I eating too much meat?

And this is for Jenna: There is nothing right about men's cologne, and I would be extremely suspicious of any man wearing it.

I never took the Pill. Consequently, I never experienced being completely free of the worry about getting pregnant when I had sex with a man, until Joe had a vasectomy.  I never got to plan having children, or have sex with the conscious intent to conceive a child. I regret that. It sounds very sexy to me.

From the time I became sexually active I spent decades trying not to get pregnant...

I have three kids. And now my childbearing years are over (thankfully!).

I remember so distinctly the first time smelling Joe's strong scent, and it was different. It spoke to me. Apparently when my nose was in his underarm I sensed a range of immunity to various pathogens. The message was: "Good genetic match. Strong offspring." It also said, "Never mind that he has no job and doesn't want one. He is a surfer. He is intimate with Mama Ocean. Who cares that he lives in the basement of a downtown LA tenement and takes a lot of drugs. He has a great body. He's a great kisser. He shall be the father of my children."

Thus, I never experienced the sadness so many of my friends feel at not having a baby, and/or trying for years to have a baby.

I wonder if the Pill played a role in the lives of my friends who wanted babies and have not been able to find the right partner or get pregnant.

How do you feel about the Pill?