No More Menses (A Perspective)

Lybrel is “the first and only FDA-approved low dose combination birth control pill you take 365 days a year without placebos.”
Ignoring the technical jabber, that means Lybrel keeps you from menstruating. Everyone knows somebody who skipped an inconveniently-timed period by taking a regular dose instead of the sugar pills. Now you can do that all the time, without the ill effects! Awesome, right?
Uh, maybe?
I am a little weird about not having my period. Sure, it’s hell of inconvenient. Periods can be messy and unpleasant: sometimes you want to fuck without sitting on a towel, and I’m sure that there are some people whose periods are bad enough that they’d be better off without ‘em. Even so. There’s something a little off-putting about this concept, and it’s not just the animated windblown woman on the website’s splash page. My menstrual cycle is an integral part of my body. The moon, the 28-day cycle, the tides, et cetera. Being on any kind of hormonal contraceptive fucks that up, detaches you from your natural body rhythms. I don’t want pregnant, and you can stay unpregnant with something other than Lybrel. Man, it’s my period, you know?
I, like many other women, use my period to judge my state of not-being-pregnant. If you don’t get your period ever, you can’t be absolutely certain you’re not pregnant. Birth control isn’t one hundred percent. Yeah, sure, you can take a pregnancy test, but you never have a skipped period to let you know that you should. The website helpfully informs me that possible signs of pregnancy are “nausea and breast tenderness”. But wait! Side effects of Lybrel? Nausea and breast tenderness! (and headaches and cramps and vaginal bleeding and for some weird reason upper respiratory infection – like my vag causes bronchitis?)
As an inveterate smoker, a feminist, and a paranoiac, I’m gonna take a pass on Lybrel. That shit can’t be good for you.

By: kat “wheezy vag” b