natural cycles is cyber-stalking me
+ why the pill is fine
I love taking my birth control pill. It tastes like nothing and goes down like air. Sometimes I swallow it dry, just to prove to myself that I can. I’ve been taking the same pill every single day for eight straight years. It is one of the few constants in my life I can count on. Taxes. The clouds in the sky. Inflation. Not being pregnant. The pill.
The pill works for me. I understand this is not the case for every person on earth. Nothing in this world is one-size-fits-all. We understand this when we try on clothes at Brandy Melville and each “same-size” item seems tailor-made for a person who doesn’t actually exist; these pants are too big, this tank top is too small, why do these shorts droop in the ass but feel tight in the crotch? However, this is a harder concept to rationalize when it applies to your health. There is no dressing room in which to try out a birth control method before you commit to a prescription or insertion, and this leads to many users getting burned in the process. I get that. Still, I don’t think this means hormonal birth control is a bad option. In fact, it’s often a very good one.
Trust and believe: I’ve been a victim of birth control-related suffering. The implant didn’t work for me. I suffered from constant bleeding, crazy waves of anxiety, shifting moods that turned on a dime. I had it taken out within two months (and have the scars to prove it). However, I would never tell someone not to get the implant. I know enough women who have loved theirs to know that my situation isn’t reflective of the product as a whole. I also know plenty of women who have hated the pill, who know that it made them depressed, or more prone to cramps, or that it didn’t feel safe because it was too difficult to take at the same time every day. Every person is different, no one story will ever be quite the same. All birth control currently on the market, approved by the FDA, is there for the same reason: It worked for someone.
You’re not going to see that kind of nuance on TikTok and Instagram, though.
Recently, I’ve been receiving a wave of unusual advertisements. Every day, I open Instagram (my curse). If I spend more than a few minutes on the app, I get the same ad.
I assume Natural Cycles has a large marketing budget, because my algorithm cannot get enough of their posts! The app promises to help women track their cycles as a preventative against pregnancy. For the low price of $79.99 per year1, Natural Cycles promises it can tell you exactly when you’re fertile, when you’re not, and when you’re about to be on your period. The basal thermometer (if, like the pill, the temperature is taken at the exact same time every morning) reports back to the app with your internal temperature which, I will admit, should aide in determining your place in your ovulation cycle.
Most of this is fine by me. I know plenty of people who use basal thermometers, either because they want to be pregnant or are interested in tracking their cycle, and it seems to work for them. If you have a regular cycle, and know this firmly to be true, I don’t see why it can’t work. You can’t get pregnant on every single day of your cycle. This is a fact. I understand the impulse to exploit this loophole.
What gets me, though, is the way this company talks about cycle tracking. It really pushes the fact that you can’t get pregnant on every day of your cycle. Like really pushes it. Once again, this is true! About five to seven days are spent ovulating in the average cycle. HOWEVER! Not only are cycles inconsistent for many, they are sensitive to external stimuli that may not be readily apparent. Those with PCOS, endometriosis, entering perimenopause, or who are on medications that cause cycle disruption may experience more or less frequent ovulation periods; some women may even ovulate twice in one cycle if they have hyperovulation syndrome (usually precipitated by one of the conditions listed above). The basal thermometer will accurately tell you which spot in your cycle you’re currently in, but it may not be able to tell you how quickly you will begin ovulating, even months into tracking, if you do not have regular cycles, or if your body experiences a hormonal disruption.
Fun fact! Sperm lives in the body for up to five days. This is why some women who were using Natural Cycles as their primary form of birth control are now reporting unexpected pregnancies. In this telling paragraph from her piece in the The Guardian, writer Olivia Sudjic details how using a basal thermometer is more difficult than she was led to believe, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy:
None of the posts on my social-media feed suggested that being a “Cycler” would be such a frustrating, often daunting commitment. One paid-for post I saw featured a still life of a puppy, a pair of on-trend headphones, a self-help book and a thermometer, with a 250-word caption starting with “5 things I need in the morning. Cuddles from Bee [the dog], tea, music, positive quotes and the first thing I do when I wake up – my Natural Cycles thermometer.” But I found that taking your temperature regularly is not so easy. The number of times I leapt out of bed bleary-eyed and needing to pee, then realised I hadn’t first taken my temperature, meant I started waking up in the middle of the night to pre-emptively urinate, panicked about missing my measuring window in the morning. On the pill, it didn’t matter if I’d just woken up, was lying down or standing up when I took it. With Natural Cycles, the slightest motion seemed to count. It was comedic until it became tragic; I got pregnant when the predictions of fertile and infertile changed back and forth in one day, turning from green to red, after I had unprotected sex.
Not only was the temperature the thermometer recorded predicated on time of day, the position of her body, and the simple act of needing to pee, the app couldn’t even read it correctly: Apparently, it was able to switch up its in-app predictions after the temperature was taken and recorded. There’s a lot of (understandable) ballyhoo about how difficult it is to take the pill at the same time every day, so why are we accepting this as an alternative?
All of the above could hypothetically be acceptable if Natural Cycles was reasonable enough to include a little footnote on all of their advertisements and within the app itself that natural family planning should be undertaken with the usage of a backup birth control method. Likely, if you’re using this app, you don’t want to fuck with your hormones. I get it. That’s where condoms come in. Feeling vintage? The diaphragm is Carrie Bradshaw-approved. In my humble opinion, it’s irresponsible for an application on your phone to hit you with the following copy:
“You can have unprotected sex on Green Days2.” “You do not need to use additional protection (such as a condom).” Girl, in what world? When it even says that you could have a new fertility status (!!!) one day later?? On the other hand, my pill packet comes with this cute little warning regarding the absence of two pills in a row: “Use a BACK-UP METHOD anytime you have sex.” The pill packet acknowledges there is a risk to all unprotected sex. Not because women can actually get pregnant for more than six days in their cycle, but because these things are harder to predict than we would like them to be. Even with the aide of a basal thermometer and historical data, hormones can change without our consent, on the pill or off the pill. To pretend otherwise is misleading at best. Personally, I would dare to call it a grift.
It’s trendy to go off hormonal birth control right now. Lorde wrote an entire album about it that came out yesterday. Well-meaning influencer posts or viral TikToks about getting off the pill due to the side-effects have accidentally opened the doors to more conservative actors who are willing to play with the fears of young people that are unsure which birth control method is right for them. To be clear, this is the fault of the algorithms on the platforms we use, not the women airing real grievances about their birth control experiences. Alt-right influencers like Candace Owens3 have been exploiting this opening in the marketplace of ideas for years now. I’m afraid that because of how social algorithms work, women who otherwise would have found alternative methods of birth control that are safer and more predictable than natural family planning have been bamboozled into trusting an app with their data and their uterus. In a post-Roe world (which we’ll get to), this is a dangerous precedent to set.
This is the pipeline effect in a nutshell: A normal person has a problem that makes them feel misunderstood. Why doesn’t the pill work for me? Am I broken? The internet is ready to flood you with reassurance in the form of content. No, you’re not broken. You’re the victim of an impersonal healthcare system. You need to learn more about how your body works, that’s how you protect yourself. Your body is cyclical and predictable. Your cycle is proof of divine femininity. Natural really is the way to go; have you tried this supplement for your depression? Oh, ovulating? Yeah, it makes you crazyyyyy. You’ve been misled by feminism into thinking that women aren’t emotional and irrational animals. Why else would you have gone on that pill? Only women can have periods, by the way. Maybe you should think about having that baby. Women are more powerful when they become mothers. It’s the natural way of things. The right way. Don’t vaccinate that baby, though, it might get autism!
Do I think Natural Cycles is necessarily intending to shuffle anyone down the crunchy trad-wife path? Not necessarily. I think their advertisements speak for themselves, but I don’t assume it’s calculated. I think this is just how these founders are; dishonest enough to not care about the consequences of the app upon the user base, ignorant enough to believe that the worst won’t really happen. Femtech poster children for the post-Roe moment. How charming.
That’s the elephant in the room, isn’t it? Roe doesn’t exist anymore. Depending on the state you live in, you are not safe from a forced birth. Fucking around with cycle apps is all well and good if you don’t really mind having a kid. Be my guest. But for the young people using this app that truly cannot afford to get pregnant, do not want to get pregnant, and may not have a way out if they should become pregnant, this is a negligent disservice. We are not in a position to be doing this. The case of Adriana Smith in Georgia is proof: These lawmakers would prefer to keep someone on life support, brain dead and actively decaying, rather than let her rest, regardless of what her family has to say about it. These CEOs don’t give a fuck about that. They don’t give a fuck about what happens to you at all.
This isn’t to say Natural Cycles doesn’t work for anyone or that hormonal birth control doesn’t have its own problems. Clearly, both things can be true. Three people I personally know use the app, and three more follow the account on Instagram. None of them have been pregnant recently. One spoke to me positively about her experience. However, I think it’s worth mentioning that the natural family planning subreddit r/FAMnNFP doesn’t recommend the app for the same reasons Sudjic outlines above. I recommend reading this thread in its entirety for further anecdotes but, in short, there are more unplanned pregnancies/pregnancy scares from this app than just the ones mentioned in The Guardian article. Plan B ain’t cheap, guys! Trust me on that one. Still, I understand the impulse to know more about your cycle. I do worry that placing too much stock in your cycle regarding mood changes just plays into gender essentialism, but that’s a topic for another day. If it’s for medical reasons, I think it can still be valuable.
Me? I’m gonna stick to that pill, structural changes to the brain be damned. Let me turn that cycle off like a faucet. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Admittedly, I struggle with brain fog while on the pill, and it sucks. But contraception is a give and take. What risks you’re willing to take, and what side effects you can endure, are aspects of ones personal decision. Should we have better options? Correct. Should we advocate for them? Correct. Should we quit using them altogether? Well! That’s another story.
To their credit, this can be covered by insurance because this app is FDA-approved. I know I said everything on the market with an FDA approval is there for a reason and I might have lied. Whatever. Not sure what covering this with insurance would look like, but it may be similar to the pill or other hormonal birth control which is required to be a $0 copay because of the Affordable Care Act. This isn’t equitable amongst types of birth control, however, and Natural Cycles may fall under that category.
Should I make a Green Day joke here? Wake Me Up When My Period Ends? Boulevard of Broken Condoms? 21 Cums? I’ll be here all day, folks.
I hate you, queen!