When it first came on the market, the birth control pill gave women more control over their sexual health than ever before. Birth control pills helped you to prevent pregnancy by inhibiting your ovaries from releasing a mature egg into the fallopian tubes during monthly ovulation – just in case you weren’t aware! However, recent studies are starting to show that eliminating ovulation may also affect your wellbeing in more subtle ways. By tricking your body into thinking it’s pregnant, your oral contraceptive may be discretely altering your attraction to men and vice versa. Though you may not realise it, there are subtle but important ways in which a single, tiny egg can make a monthly difference.
1. The Eyes (Don’t) Have it: You may have heard that your eyes dilate when looking at something or someone attractive, but the Pill interferes with this physiological response. Cristen Conger, wellness writer and co-host of the popular Stuff Mom Never Told You podcast, details, ‘Psychologists at the University of Trom in Norway tracked women’s pupil dilation, a physiological response to attraction, at multiple intervals during their menstrual cycles. Viewing a series of sexually stimulating photographs each time, participants’ pupil dilation was most pronounced during the women’s ovulatory phase – unless they were taking oral birth control. Women on the pill demonstrated no such additional stimulation, even in response to a photo of their current sexual partner.’
2. Sending Signals: According to Conger, ‘A lingering question about human evolution is what happened to female oestrus. In other mammals, oestrus is more commonly referred to as being “in heat,” the brief window when females can be impregnated. Women, on the other hand, can get pregnant at any point during their menstrual cycles, and – unlike some other animals, like baboons, which may experience temporarily engorged vulvas – ovulation comes with no outright physical signs of fertility.’ To test this out, researchers at the University of New Mexico investigated a group of 60 strippers, who were asked to log their daily tips from customers as well as the progress of their menstrual cycle. The results of the study revealed that during ovulation, strippers took home $335 per shift, compared to $185 per shift during their low-fertility periods. However, if the strippers were on hormonal birth control, they took home roughly the same amount each day, averaging $80 less than their naturally cycling cohorts. The researchers surmised this was because the male customers instinctively found the naturally cycling, and more immediately fertile, dancers more sexually appealing.
3. Lowered libido: Ironically, a lowered libido is an often cited side effect of hormonal contraceptives. Conger explains, ‘Birth control can work too well, in a sense, not only diminishing pregnancy risk but also dampening the desire for sexual intercourse. Anecdotal evidence has long supported this unadvertised side effect, and a growing number of studies have confirmed the rumours…Sexual dysfunction, such as low sex drive, poor lubrication or difficulty achieving orgasms, isn’t uncommon for women regardless of birth control.’ While researchers are still trying to work out whether the hormones in birth control could be to blame, repeated analysis has implicated oral hormonal contraception as a common culprit among women reporting limp libidos.
4. Choosing Mr. Wrong: Not only might your birth control make you less appealing to men and less in the mood for sex, it may also steer you towards a genetically unsuitable mate. ‘By successfully tricking the body into thinking its pregnant, underlying sexual behaviours follow suit, diverting single women toward more genetically similar men,’ Conger notes. ‘Although humans tend to practice assortative mating, in which people with similar backgrounds and sociodemographics couple up; genetically, however, opposites attract.’ As the Pill tricks your body into thinking it’s pregnant, it feels compelled to build a social support system among family and friends rather than seeking out a sexual suitor.