Being Birth Control Girl
My friends call me “Birth Control Girl,” as if stashing condoms, dental dams and Plan B pills in my dorm room qualifies as a superpower. I’ve spent many evenings sharing sex education fun facts with my roommates; I have been introduced to a crowd of strangers as “Birth Control Girl.” My enthusiasm for contraceptives, sex safe practices, and preventing my friends from becoming teenage moms has morphed into a key facet of my personality.
It started when I packed for college last summer. In between the piles of t-shirts and sneakers meant to get trashed at house parties, my mom slid two boxes of Plan B pills — the elusive pill purchased at drugstores the morning after; the pill shrouded in euphemisms. My mom told me to keep them on hand in case a friend needed them, especially as I was going to college in Missouri, a state where only one Planned Parenthood that offers abortions remained. She wanted to ensure that no one I was close with found themselves in a bind after unprotected sex. So, I drove across a few state lines to college with my life, and two doses of pills that could prevent pregnancy, packed into blue IKEA duffle bags.
Arriving at college, I mentioned to my new friends that I had the Plan B pill in my first aid kit, god forbid anyone needed it. I told them to just let me know if they wanted it; I wouldn’t ask any follow up questions. A few weeks later, I pocketed a few condoms and dental dams after a Planned Parenthood club meeting. Frankly, the colorful wrappers caught my eye, and I thought the contraceptives could make for a good gag gift.
I didn’t have time to save them for someone’s birthday or a gift exchange. Once I mentioned that I was now the proud owner of exactly one latex condom, one of my friends asked if they could have it. There was a thrill for me in passing along the condom. I felt a surge of pride in helping out a friend and doing my part in preventing unwanted pregnancies and the spread of STDs. The next time safe sex supplies were distributed for free on campus, I stuffed a few more condoms into my backpack. Before long, I accumulated a sizable stash of contraceptives.
The existence of the stash became amusing for my friends and for myself. I figured out a way to include in most conversations that I had the hot commodity of Plan B on me. I now straight up ask people if they need condoms or dental dams. Perhaps I am doing my small part in destigmatizing conversations about sex so that everyone can be safer when engaging in it. Perhaps the comedian inside of me laughs that a lesbian keeps condoms in her desk drawer. Perhaps I just like to help out my friends in a small way. Or perhaps possessing the superpower of “Birth Control Girl” makes me feel like I have some bodily autonomy.
In the last few months, the U.S. has seen a surge in anti-abortion legislation. In September of 2021, My home state of Texas enacted one the strictest abortion laws in the nation, banning abortions after only six weeks. At six weeks, most people with uteruses might not even know they are pregnant. The law restricts the healthcare of Texans with uteruses severely, hitting low-income individuals and communities of color the hardest. I watched the enactment of the law unfold from Missouri, where a new law introduced to the state legislature aims to ban individuals from leaving the state to get an abortion.
As a young woman, I feel terrified. I feel like the ability to make decisions about my own body is being ripped from my hands. I feel powerless. Maybe being “Birth Control Girl” is silly in the scheme of everything, but that title makes me feel like I am putting the power of bodily autonomy back into my own hands.
I am taking that step of bestowing bodily autonomy on myself one step further. A few weeks ago, I waltzed into an OB-GYN office for the first time, ecstatic. Maybe excitement is a weird way to describe going to the OB-GYN, but after suffering with horrible hormone spikes and debilitating cramps during my menstrual cycle for years, I finally decided to ask for help. That’s when my doctor prescribed me a pack of hormonal birth control pills, and I felt myself inflate with euphoria. Birth Control Girl finally got birth control of her own.
As a strictly humanities focused student, I have no idea how a pill functions to make periods less painful. It seems like magic. My whole adolescence, I assumed that my period would suck, making me cancel plans to cry into a heating pad, and forcing me to run across campus to change my jeans, after forgetting to pack an extra tampon. The only respite from the ordeal of menstrual cycles would be pregnancy or menopause. But sitting in my OB-GYN’s office as my doctor sent in my prescription to a pharmacy, telling me that “young women are too busy to have to deal with PMS on top of everything else,” I realized that my uterus didn’t have to sentence me to agony.
Being “Birth Control Girl” is a super power to me. As lawmakers without uteruses try to control mine, I feel radical in reclaiming my reproductive health. If the states I call home want to limit access to abortions, then I want to shower my friends with Plan B pills so they don’t have to jump through the legal hoops in order to not go through a pregnancy they don’t want to go through. If talking about sex remains such a taboo, I will do my small part in normalizing the conversation, because you cannot be safe in sex if you don’t know which practices are unsafe.
Thinking about birth control and reproductive health is not a major part of every woman’s identity, but those thoughts are essential to the way I view myself as a young woman. Armed with a desire to destigmatize the conversation surrounding sex, advocate for cheap and accessible contraceptives, and make abortions widely accessible to individuals who need them, I proudly call myself “Birth Control Girl.”
However, I’m only one person. I know that I cannot change the way my country thinks about reproductive health alone, so I will do my part as “Birth Control Girl” to create a more sex-positive, uterus-friendly world, however small that part may be. In the meantime, I’ll keep dancing to the sounds of me and my friends’ phone alarms, blaring, reminding us to take our birth control pills. ♦
Sources
Missouri lawmakers propose getting abortions in other states by The Associated Press, NBC News, March 17, 2022.
Texas 6-week abortion ban takes effect after Supreme Court inaction by Ariana de Vogue, CNN, September 1, 2021.