Is Criticizing Hormonal Birth Control Anti-Feminist? (Episode 476)

Full Transcript: Episode 476

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: This is the Fertility Friday Podcast, episode number 476.

Welcome to the Fertility Friday Podcast, your source for information about the Fertility Awareness Method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of The Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Workbook. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with over 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormone health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I have been consistently outspoken about hormonal birth control over the past two decades and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I teach women’s health professionals how to utilize the menstrual cycle as a vital sign in their practices, and I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys and a brand new baby girl. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health. And I’m so excited that you’re here with me today.

Today I’m sharing a brand new episode. I’m sharing my interview with Holly Grigg-Spall. If you’re not familiar with Holly, she is the mastermind behind The Business of Birth Control. It was her book Sweetening the Pill that actually inspired that documentary. And in today’s episode, we talk a little bit about how that came about, a really interesting story of how she pitched Ricky Lake and Abby Epstein, and also why she has been involved in this work in this way, raising awareness about hormonal birth control, and how feminism fits in with all of this. Really, really interesting conversation. So before we jump in, I’m just going to share a little bit about Holly.

Holly Grigg-Spall is the author of Sweetening the Pill, the inspiration for the documentary The Business of Birth Control, where she also served as a producer. The book was released in 2013, hitting its 10-year anniversary later this year. Holly recently launched Teena, a free education-forward app supporting body literacy for tweens and teens. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode.

And I’m excited to be back again with Holly. It’s been a minute. It’s been a long time since we’ve had an interview on the podcast. And so I’m thrilled to have you back. Welcome back to the show.

Holly Grigg-Spall: Thank you very much for having me.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, and a lot has happened since then, I feel like. And so a lot has happened. First of all, huge congratulations on the Business of Birth Control documentary, because of course that was based on your book, Sweetening the Pill. And I can still remember when we talked many years ago when your book had recently come out and we were talking about it. And so it’s really cool to see how it’s come full circle.

So I’d love to just for you to take a couple of minutes and share with us how that all came about. How did you make this happen and connect with Ricky Lake and Abby Epstein to make this all a thing?

Holly Grigg-Spall: Yeah, I’m happy to talk about it. The film’s been out a while now. And you know, since my book came out in 2013, it’s almost the 10-year anniversary in September. So many other people have written amazing books, so I like to reinsert my book in the conversation because yes, it did inspire the documentary, but I think a lot of the time, like, that’s gotten—my sales suggest that may have gotten lost in the mix. So let me once again remind people.

But yeah, so when my book came out, as I say, 2013, almost a 10-year anniversary, I watched The Business of Being Born that summer while I was writing it. I gave myself about six months to write the book because I didn’t have a huge advance or anything, so I really had to make the time. I went part-time freelance, I did it, I got it in, you know, I really was limited. And during that summer, I remember I was doing so much research and I came across The Business of Being Born. Somebody introduced it to me, and I decided to watch it as part of that research. And then I ended up writing about it in the book a little bit and comparing the birth industry with the birth control industry and what they had to say about epidural and birth interventions versus birth control as an intervention and comparing basically those two states, different phases of female experience.

And so once the book was in production, I emailed Abby Epstein, the director’s production company. And I said, you know, I think your movie is amazing. Obviously it had been out a few years at that point. And I’ve written about it in my book. I’d love to send it to you to read. And you know, this was when I, you know, I didn’t have a very big publisher. So I didn’t get like galleys or anything particularly official. This is all me doing it.

So I heard back from her pretty quickly, which was really nice. And she said, yeah, she’ll send me it. And I sent her like this massive printed out in local Staples manuscript to ring bind it. But I did myself, DIY. And I sent it to her. And she was like, usually, like, I get around to reading things on the plane or when I’m traveling. So why don’t you send it to me when it’s like a book?

So I did that. And she was coming over from—she lives in New York. So she was coming over to Los Angeles to see Ricky one weekend. And at that point, I had already been trying to make a documentary with a team here in LA for about five months or so. I think, you know, I’d wanted to get the process started. I thought it really deserved a documentary treatment. I felt like it could be much more accessible and powerful. I was connecting with lots of people in LA who were doing like self-exam classes and fertility awareness classes, all these amazing things. And so we had some footage, we had a bit, you know, a bit of a narrative going, but we had no money and no time and we were all doing it as like our third job.

So when Abby called me and said, look, I read your book and I agree. This could make a really good documentary. And she was like, what can we do? Can we see what you’ve got so far? And she was only going to be in town for a couple of days and none of my team could get together to meet her the following day. So I said, look, I’ll just come and talk to you about it and about the idea and tell you what we’ve been doing and tell you about why I think there’s so many connections between what you did with The Business of Being Born and the birth control industry. And she said, okay, sure, come to Ricky Lake’s house.

And casually, pictures essentially. And I don’t drive. So I got on the bus in Silver Lake on the other side of town from Ricky Lake in Los Angeles. And I took the bus all the way to Brentwood. And then I walked to Ricky Lake’s house. I’m giving you the full story here, which I think has never been heard before. And I walked up and it was a gate and I didn’t, it wasn’t in the car, so I had to press the button. And I went in and I went and sat down at Ricky Lake’s kitchen island in her beautiful house. And I pitched them for like three hours straight. She had a yoga class set up, the yoga teacher came, they joined the pitch, like the whole thing just went on. Just me, mid in the middle of it all. This was my life at the time, just pitching this idea of making a documentary about this topic and answering all their questions and everything.

And by the time I left, they were like, yeah, we’re going to do it. This is our next project. They’d executive produced other movies that had been—I think Breastmilk was also completed by the time they came on board, but this one they really wanted to stamp their names on. And obviously The Business of Birth Control, the title shows that. And obviously I was absolutely thrilled. So it was mostly persistence and courage and thus it got me to Ricky Lake’s house to pitch, yeah.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: I love that story. And in retrospect, it’s kind of like obviously the documentary is made, but having had to get to know you a little bit over the years here and there, I can just imagine how powerful your pitch was because this is close to your heart. This isn’t just something that you thought, oh, it’d be cool. So maybe tell us a little bit about the passion behind it, especially for the listeners that aren’t familiar with your book. Because there’s a whole lot of newer younger listeners that may have absolutely no idea, like you said, that your book spawned the documentary.

Holly Grigg-Spall: Yeah, that’s right. And so this was in late 2013. And I began my whole journey of really writing the book in 2009. It began as a blog on Blogspot because that’s what you did in 2009. People are like, what? Let’s blog something. Yes, so if you could look it up, it still exists. And it was Sweetening the Pill: Who Am I When I’m Not on the Pill. And I was essentially documenting my experience of coming off the pill after 10 years, from about the age of 17 to about the age of 26, 27.

And I decided to come off because I had really bad side effects, mostly in the mental health zone, but also physical side effects with a very, very much popular and advertised and heavily marketed pill at the time, which was called then Yaz or Yasmin. There’s now many, many non-patented versions of this, but basically a pill that contained a progestin called drospirenone, which was created to create a new market, a new way to make a profit basically for the pharmaceutical company. Didn’t prevent pregnancy any more effectively than any other pill, but they promoted it as like solving all the problems. So getting rid of your PMS, your acne. It was even considered to be like the one pill that made you lose weight. There were so many benefits that were put out there and they were stamped on by the FDA for doing that because they had no research to back up most of those claims. And then they were stamped on again because it was discovered that that pill had a much higher risk of blood clots for women than the older brands.

And it was kept on the market after a particularly corrupt FDA hearing around that. Even David Kessler, the former FDA commissioner who’s in the documentary, would tell you that it was a pretty corrupt situation that allowed it to stay on the market anyway, despite having no other benefits from other pills.

And so that pill specifically was the one that caused me a lot of mental health side effects—depression, anxiety, panic attacks, just really a very big shift in my personality in my mid-20s after 10 years of taking different types of pills and then two years of taking that one and only later making the connection.

And so my personal experience kind of met this big national moment that was, to me, huge news, but nobody was really covering. This was not a story that was in Glamour Magazine. It wasn’t on Jezebel. It wasn’t on Slate. It wasn’t on any of the feminist online world that it was then, which was huge. It really wasn’t covered at all. You can find little pieces about it in like the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post and things like that, but not huge. There was no exposé. There was no consideration of the implications of this for the amount of women who’d been sold this is like the answer to all their hormonal issues and what the fallout could be.

And so that spurred me along to write about my personal experience but also research more into the pill. So the blog became my place for me to put a lot of what I was reading, really like years of the research I did before the book, essentially interviews with experts and with women who’d been through similar things. And I got a lot of feedback that made me realize, okay, this is something that isn’t being talked about. There isn’t a book out there that’s really doing this. You know, the topic had been mentioned in a couple of books I’d come across, but nothing. Most women’s health history books really just would say, oh, and then the pill came out and everything was great. You know, they would be really an aside, a footnote.

And so yes, the book became a book proposal and I spent again many years really pitching it to people and nobody wanted to publish it if it wasn’t written by a doctor at the time. They just didn’t see any interest in somebody sharing their experience, even with the level of research and the number of interviews I’d done. And finally I found a publisher and then that’s how it became the book and then the book that I pitched to Ricky Lake.

But I did get support here and there. There was a lot more support in the UK media. I got to write some articles and I did continue to blog on things like that. So, but this was, yeah, this was all back before Instagram, before, you know, people promoting hormone-free lifestyle, before doctor influencers, before all of that. It was a precursor, so it came before all of that. And, you know, now it’s kind of like, you know, it’s continued to be a bit of a cult find and it’s not from the point of view of sort of—it’s more of a social cultural examination of the pill as well as exploring the health issues, but it’s not really been repeated in that same way again I would say, although there’s been a lot of amazing books since then.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, yeah, your book was unique in that it brought that feminist aspect of it alongside the kind of, you know, touching on those health issues, obviously that you’d experienced personally. And, you know, I feel like we’ve spoken about this on occasion, but it was a bit of a different time. It’s really strange to think that it’s been, you know, only 10 years because it does seem like it’s quite different now, the cultural landscape.

I feel like at that time, I remember that was around the time I started my podcast. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we connected at that time because my podcast started in 2014. And so I feel like at that time, it was more taboo to talk about the pill in a negative light. It was that, you know, it still is because it’s still controversial. There’s still that, you know, people kind of coming out the woodwork questioning if it’s really feminist to talk about it because the kind of assumption is like, okay, well, if we’re criticizing the pill and how it operates, it must mean that we’re trying to take it away from women, which is—I don’t remember reading that in your book. Like, and we should just make it not available for women. I feel like it was more to raise awareness similar to what I’ve always done. So maybe you can speak to that. And also just that kind of changing cultural climate where it doesn’t seem to be as taboo now to talk about it and maybe it’s because so much data has come out and we can’t really deny that the pill causes side effects anymore. Maybe that’s what it is. I don’t know.

Holly Grigg-Spall: I think you’re right, although I think a lot of people are still unaware of that research and people still do deny that the pill causes side effects. After the film came out, there were pieces in Rolling Stone magazine that were acting like, oh no, there’s no conclusive evidence that the pill causes depression. It’s mixed, still. We’re not sure. Are you still not sure? It’s been out since 1961. Okay, when are we going to be sure?

No, there’s still, like, and there’s still, I think, in the US, like you said, this fear around access, this idea that the pill will be taken away. And especially post the Roe v. Wade fall, there is, you know, that’s become almost more of an issue. Although we never stopped getting emails throughout the whole process of making the film and after my book came out, when, you know, there was a press release that said it was going to happen all those years ago. And it takes a long time to make a documentary anyway. But we still got lots of emails coming through being like, do you think this is the right time? And this would be, you know, every six months or nine months or so.

So it’s never been, in many people’s view, it’s never been the right time to have this conversation and it may never be the right time to have this conversation. But I think the change has been, is illustrated in the film, which is that there are so many more people publicly talking about this, who are OBGYNs, MDs, naturopathic doctors, health practitioners of different kinds, researchers. And lots of them are represented in the film, including you. And a lot of those have come out at least into the public sphere in the last 10 years. They may have been doing this work privately for a longer time. But then, you know, social media allowed us to find each other, I think. And people found community that had done the same level of research and looked into this enough that they felt they could come and talk about it with the backing of a bunch of other people, which I think has made the idea of criticizing the pill or talking about the pill’s side effects or talking about alternatives or talking about it not being right for everybody, much more possible for a lot more people.

And so we’ve seen that. So now, you know, when you get articles about natural birth control, there’s a big trend on TikTok. This has become more of a movement and it’s driven by that side of things. I also think it’s driven by sort of generational changes with younger women more interested in finding out about medications and choosing them carefully and about gender roles and what’s the burden that’s put on women in terms of preventing pregnancy. I think that’s become something that people are more aware of and more likely to talk about as well.

So I think there’s been a few shifts there. And then at the same time, like you said, I think there’s been some things that have stayed very much the same. And you’re right, I never said in my book that I felt like that we should ban the pill or take the pill away, but I’ve always, always had to sort of throat clear and make sure that that was known since the beginning. And the assumption was always that I was sort of a stealth conservative or a stealth Republican or a stealth Catholic and I’d sort of created this secular—and you know, if you felt that, you obviously didn’t read my book because the final chapter goes off on some sort of Marxist tangent because it’s amongst a publisher that published the book. So I wanted to make it fit their general output.

So yeah, no, you hadn’t read till the end if you thought that. And some of them did read till the end and then still gave me five-star reviews despite saying that they disagreed with me entirely from all other points of view, which is interesting.

Yeah, I think that’s still the case now. I still feel that there’s a need to kind of make that clear that I am a feminist, that I’m liberal, I vote Democrat—which I do now since I’m an American citizen—and that I believe that the pill should remain accessible to the point that I even think there’s a good case for making it over the counter, which is something that’s come up recently because of the case here for making the progestin-only pill over the counter. Yeah.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, it’s just so interesting. And as you were talking, it made me reflect a little bit on my bubble, essentially, because you are right that although—and this is often a similar sentiment that I have about fertility awareness, cycle charting as a whole. So when people discover that rabbit hole, and let’s say they dive into the podcast or something, we can—as you get more used to hearing about it and talking about it, you know, following people that are talking about it, getting into that kind of community, you can be under the false impression that fertility awareness is mainstream. And it isn’t. And I think similarly with this conversation that we’re having about the pill and the side effects, the average woman still doesn’t really know. And even with all of this attention, and that’s crazy to think about, especially for the listeners who are kind of in this community, in this bubble and feel like everybody knows the same big names or whatever it is.

Yeah, the average woman still doesn’t know because if for all the listeners, if you think about your girlfriends, your personal group of girlfriends, you know, how many of them really know, right? Unless you talk to them about it. Right.

Holly Grigg-Spall: And the thing is, I’ve joined two separate, like, women’s groups in the last year, completely different things. One of them is sort of a professional networking. One of them is more kind of like an ideas-based group. And the professional networking one—stunned when this comes up that there are women my age making money, single professional women doing their thing on Depo-Provera or the NuvaRing and have absolutely no clue. I sat down with a group of them for lunch and they were like, so what do you do? And I was like, well, you know, I talk about like fertility awareness and like, you know, this is… And they were like, what? And I explained like the basics, as you’ve probably done many times in many situations, and they’re like, wow, so I didn’t realize I knew so little about my own body.

And these are women who can like, pro-reproductive rights, go to the demonstrations, sign all the petitions, write letters to their senators about their bodies and rights, but have absolutely no idea. This is like fresh news to them in their late 30s, early 40s.

And then on the other side, the other group thought it was a done and dusted thing. Like the pill’s great, we desperately needed it, everybody benefits from it, women as a whole benefit from it. This is either a non-issue or talking about it is like weird and conspiratorial. And they had no idea, like they didn’t put it into the zone even of like, it’s maybe we should think about how the pharmaceutical industry works or how they’re selling different medications to people. Even when talking about other things like the opioid crisis or anything else like that that’s come to attention in recent years, they weren’t making—joining the dots and finding, oh, this is something that we should consider too. It just wasn’t on their radar as something that you would—there would maybe be a third viewpoint, right? Not the let’s take it all away, ban it. Not the we should hand it out on the corner of the street, but the middle way, right? They had no idea that there was a middle nuanced way to look at this.

And that’s just my experience of the last year. And yes, it is eye-opening because you get, as you said, you get into the rabbit hole and get into the community and you start, you get like into an echo chamber or a bubble where you think that this is the way everything is and it’s sort of making progress. And in one sense, yes, there’s, you know, people talking about natural birth control on TikTok. And it’s enough that they write articles about it because they’re scared. But at the same time, yes, unlikely that most people, you know, it’s even, you know, there’s still women taking the pill, there’s still women taking Depo-Provera, there’s still women taking the NuvaRing, who have no idea of the possible side effects, no idea that they are currently experiencing side effects, that they may be taking other medications for or seeking multiple professionals to figure out what’s going on.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, it’s so interesting to hear that. On the one hand, I’m sure some listeners are kind of shocked in a way. Others are like, what’s wrong with Depo? And so I’ll link a couple podcast episodes in case you’re not up with some of our concerns. So just to put it out there, of all the hormonal contraceptive options, Depo is my least favorite because of how long it takes a cycle to return to normal. So even in the research, it’s like 18 months, right, for things to start to return to normal. So if anyone didn’t know, now you know. And I’ll link a couple episodes.

But that has been my experience in my personal life. So, you know, I don’t go around talking about what I do all the time. So if you were to meet me in a social situation, you didn’t know me, I don’t just be like, hey—like I don’t, I just don’t do that. But of course, I’m not going to be rude. So if somebody asks me what I do, right, similar to your situation, then it comes out. And every single time I get so much information, right, about the whoever I’m sitting across from, their partner, right, like male or female, like if it’s a male, he’ll tell about his wife, right, or his sister, his cousin, or—so even recently I was looking for a nanny. And so it kind of came up like, oh, what do you do? And then like, I get like, oh, yeah, I’ve got like pain, like it’s all—

So all the interesting thing that I feel like unites us is that all women who have this experience of menstruation and having to manage their fertility and all of that, there’s so much there. And it’s really incredible as you were talking about how few women really even know how their body works and just what an irony of ironies of women literally picketing outside government buildings for their reproductive rights when they literally don’t even know how to tell when they ovulate or that they’re not ovulating when they use contraceptives. And that pill period isn’t a real period. Right. Like, it’s just so ironic that this is the state of the world.

So I think it’s a really good reminder of how important it is that we do talk about it. And one of the things that I wanted to just mention, because if I remember correctly, when I did the interview with Ricky and Abby about the documentary, one of the things that they shared with me was how much backlash they got, like even more so than The Business of Being Born. And that was, I suppose, surprising to me that there was so much more. So maybe you could speak to that.

Holly Grigg-Spall: Yeah, they had a really rough time with The Business of Being Born too, but I think the difference here was they put out a press release once they optioned my book for the film to state that this was what they were going to do next. And even based on like a three or four paragraph press release, people were nuts about it. Like they hadn’t even seen any real footage of what they were going to do. And if you, you know, they said it was going to be inspired by my book and that was enough. And they knew the reviews of my book and what had happened.

And basically, you know, the vast majority of like mainstream media reviews of my book were takedowns, even though I had positive interviews and pieces in like Washington Post several times, for example, and other places, Ms. Magazine, leading up to the book. Once the book was out, there sort of was a pile-on—sorry, there was a kind of a pile-on of takedowns where there was one person who read the book and trashed it, said it was sexist and dangerous. And then there were a bunch of people who didn’t bother to read the book, who based off that review, trashed it. So it sort of had this spiraling of this kind of snowballing effect from that point of view.

And so, yeah, they had a lot of pushback just based on that, which I think was shocking to them too, because they had not made a statement on their sort of position or anything. They just said they wanted to explore making this film, very early days.

And Ricky was working with an organization at the time, I think it was the National Campaign for the Prevention of Teen Pregnancy. I’m not sure if it exists anymore. But she had previously done like condom PSAs with them, like good, you know, good educational stuff and put her face to that. And they dropped her unceremoniously without a phone call, without an email, without asking questions. Nothing. Gone. No.

And that was the start of it, I think, as far as they were concerned. They found it amazing that they could do that without having seen anything that they put together for it. And then I think that even people within their own community had reached out to them and said, you know, you think this is a good idea? You know, is it the right time? You know, all these things.

And I think some of that speaks to the fact that, my, how my book was received. And some of it just is that it is, was, and is still this issue that’s so politicized that the assumption is that you’re going to be giving fodder, ammunition to the other side to use to take away access and rights from women. Which I guess when they made The Business of Being Born several years previously, that, the idea of like home birth versus hospital birth or natural birth, it wasn’t very politicized as such, right?

I think now, thinking about it—which is not, I haven’t really thought about it that in depth—but I would say it wasn’t that politicized. Perhaps more so now it is associated with a certain political social viewpoint than it was then. But less so back when they made that film. And, you know, it was more talking about doulas and midwives and this sort of whole world of possible support system for women to make those choices. Whereas with the pill, it is so politicized and still is so politicized that the moment you talk about it, people make 10 different assumptions about where you’re coming from with it and your outlook.

For example, they assume that one of your arguments is that it causes abortion, because that’s one of the common arguments from the conservative side, right, that that’s what’s happening with a lot of women and they’re unaware of it. So people make so many assumptions about it, from the specific to that to, you know, what your wider outlook is and how you vote, I think. And so it put them in a whole different category for criticism and attacks, actually. Just another category beyond talking about women’s health and vaginas and birth and bodies that would normally get you attention. It just, I think it took another, added another layer.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Yeah, I think it’s so interesting how quickly things can spiral when people don’t listen or when they pile on their assumptions on what you’re talking about. I think as a fertility awareness educator, one thing I feel like I was somewhat insulated from a lot of the negative things that maybe you experienced because over the years, I mean, hopefully I’m not inviting it now, but I didn’t ever really get a ton of negative—of course I get, you know, negative things here—but I never got a ton of attacks. And I think maybe I was partially insulated from it because the approach that I was always taking, I wasn’t just saying—like I was always talking about fertility awareness. That was actually the main part of the conversation. And the pill part of the conversation was the education piece about did you know. And I always say the same thing. I think as you get into this space, you get your kind of tagline how you talk about it. But I mean it when I say that I believe that with this information, it allows women to make choices. And clearly, some women with the same information are going to choose to continue to use the pill exactly how they would. Others are going to use it for less time. And some are not going to use it. I feel like that’s literally the outcome. And I just want to facilitate that outcome so that women can choose how they’re going to interact with this drug. It’s not about, you know, not using it, because I used it when I was a teenager.

Holly Grigg-Spall: Well, no. And I think that you’ve always come from it from—now you may think I’m wrong—I think you’ve come from it from a non-ideological point of view, whereas I came from it from a health point of view of my own experience and an ideological point of view. So I came from it talking about like, hey, how did this become a feminist sacred cow? What role has feminism played in getting us here? Why hasn’t it become a cause? Why has it been ignored? What does that say about the women’s movement?

And also from the point of view of frustration that the discussion was being allowed to be controlled and led by those who did want to take away access to the pill, who didn’t have women’s best interests at heart, who weren’t interested in women’s rights causes, who didn’t want women to have reproductive sovereignty. And they were controlling the conversation, I felt, because the Democrat side that was liberal and did want to uphold those rights and were letting them, but also didn’t have the best interests of women at heart, because they were allowing the situation of not talking about safety and side effects for motor birth control to continue and not being honest about it and leaving out vital information.

And so one side was lying, one side was leaving out a lot of information that was really necessary. And then I felt like the women’s movement was doing—had done nothing since the early 70s and had just let it happen. And they had. And even like the big organizations, Our Bodies Ourselves, like it didn’t matter, like it was too important that the pill be upheld as this having this diplomatic immunity and be this sacred cow that they didn’t touch it. And, you know, they were like, no, that was our—we did that, we got the pill and it’s great. We’re not going to say that that might have been a problematic situation or there might be other sides of it or there might be nuance there or there might be things that weren’t so good. No, this is categorically a win, basically, for feminists, and they weren’t happy to give that idea up.

So I’m not pretending I don’t know why the book was controversial. And perhaps if they’d said we’re making a birth control—a movie about birth control documentary—and they took themselves up to somebody else or some other element of it, they may have sidestepped some of the issues. I don’t know. They sidestepped all of the controversy? I don’t think that’s possible just because of who they are and their status and all these things.

But, yeah, I mean, the book just didn’t make any friends and I didn’t write it to make any friends. I wrote it as a British person who’d moved to the US, who also was somewhat politically naive at the time, didn’t—because in the UK where I was from, it seemed like much more like something that was received in much more of an open-minded way, partly due to the lack of—non-profit medical healthcare system, I think.

So yeah, I know why it happened and I think the reason perhaps that you didn’t get it, and other people don’t too—like I’m thinking I could think of several other people with books out who’ve sidestepped it—partly is because they don’t directly attack it as like a cultural, social, ideological issue, which to me it is. If you go from the individual perspective, where, you know, individuals making choices, this is just an alternative, I’m just providing resources, this is just information that you need, or here’s how to go off the pill, here are the steps and supplements you need to take—all of that is completely different packaging. Even coming from a, I’m a PhD researcher and this is what’s out there about the pill, and I’m only going to kind of under the cover of that put in some of my ideological points of view—there’s so many other ways to package this.

I just happened to package these ideas in the most flammable way, I think. And I often think that back, but I still, like, of course, I don’t regret how I did that because I still believe that that part of the conversation is absolutely necessary. And to be honest, the majority of people are still not comfortable talking about it in that way. So like I did something that, as I said, hasn’t so far been repeated, because most people are much more comfortable to talk about it from an individual health point of view. And I still think there’s a necessary place for talking about it from that point, my point of view.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: So that’s so interesting. What it made me think of was a few conversations, not a lot. I mean, I’m not always talking to the other demographic, the women who would now be past menopause, right, the older generation. But I have had conversations here and there over the years. I feel like I’m remembering a conversation I had with one woman in particular, and she was just flabbergasted, you know, that anyone would even talk about it. Because for her, she was in her heyday during the women’s rights movement and all that. And so for her, it did mean this liberation and all that.

And I mean, here, I literally attack that point when I go back to the creators of it in the book and everything and how I talk about it. It’s so interesting to read the story of how it came about. It didn’t have anything to do with, it was like, in a way, right? Like it did, but they did it in this covert, like, we’re going to lie to you and tell you it does something that it doesn’t type of way, right?

So I feel like that divide is a nice transition for us to talk about what this could mean for the younger generation. And I know you’ve been working on an incredible project. So I’ll let you share a little bit about it. I mean, one of the questions I get most often is, well, what book do I give for teens? I know some parents will buy my book and kind of, you know, although my books are intended for adults, right? Although obviously teenagers can use the information, but there’s definitely the sexual piece of it and the reproductive piece of it and all of that. Anyways, so maybe share what you’ve been working on. Tell us about Teena and how you’re looking to bring the younger generation into this conversation.

Holly Grigg-Spall: Yeah, so obviously, writing the book and producing the documentary, a lot of what does come up, like you say, is, well, what about teenage girls and the younger generation? Like, what should we do? How to approach this? And I think that I’ve always felt that it was important that body literacy education—I think you feel the same—should be starting early in schools or have some source during that high school time for women to have the best platform to make informed choices throughout their lives. Whether that means they do decide to go on the pill at some point or not, to have that information early can be so important and it can just really feed into the rest of life decisions about sexuality and relationships and all sorts of things. But that is something I’ve talked about for a really long time.

And so my feeling was very much that I wanted there to be more information out there that looked at menstrual health and the menstrual cycle from the wellness point of view that people like yourself and other experts in the field do for adult women more so, where you’re not just talking about avoiding pregnancy and sex and reproduction, you’re also talking about menstrual cycle as a vital sign and about menstrual cycle awareness as an important part of knowing yourself and being able to feel in control and manage your own life and knowing about mood changes and knowing all these things.

And so I am—with Teena, which is an app I worked on basically all throughout the pandemic phase of our lives—it’s a free app that has an in-app magazine with a lot of information from that point of view for like tweens and teenage girls. So it’s all coming from that wellness point of view of it being a vital sign. There’s no analogy laid on top. There’s no fun story or narrative that we see in a lot of other areas. It’s all very science-based, very straightforward, but written in kind of like an accessible sort of big sisterly tone and language that’s appropriate, you know, whether eight or 18, really.

And, yeah, my idea with the app was we were looking at the idea of pairing a basal body temperature device with an app that was specifically designed for younger girls to learn, maybe before their first period or maybe when they get their first period and then throughout their puberty years, about menstrual health, about hormonal phases, about the changes to their bodies in a way that’s, like as I said, wellness-focused but also very positive.

And I felt that this was missing elsewhere in my research. There was a handful of books that sort of did that specifically for that age group. A lot of them still focused on the idea of, you know, when you get your first period, this means that you can get pregnant someday, or when you get your first period, this means you’re a woman now. And I felt that those two narratives were not particularly engaging for younger girls, especially girls before their first period, but girls in their early teens. I felt like this was kind of—it could be off-putting to a lot of young girls. It all could be quite scary or could cause them to shut down from the conversation.

But at the opposite side, I felt like all the great information we were sharing for adult women about menstrual health and wellness was actually a really great way of presenting this transition to younger girls and talking about how, you know, it’s about building strength and becoming you and developing your personality and the ovary-brain connection and all these things. And I thought that that was much more interesting and engaging way to approach periods and early cycles than I was seeing elsewhere.

And also I just felt there was a—there were a lot of other apps out there, but none of them really took time to consider making sure that all the language and the way that they approached the cycle is very positive.

So other aspects of the app that I worked on, including the in-app magazine—I think it’s got about 40-plus articles, we’re just adding video this month as well, which is really great—and there’s also an animated cycle journey that goes through each element of the cycle that you can go through and look at different parts of it and interact with it and look at what’s happening and where in the body. But then there’s also the option to track with basal body temperature your cycles so you know which phase you’re in and, you know, whether you’re in the follicular phase or luteal phase, and track ovulation and menstruation.

And so we have cycle-synced affirmations based on luteal or follicular phase, suggestions that are like how teenage girls could manage their moods and emotions and hormonal shifts more so with knowledge, body knowledge and body literacy.

And so all the mood stickers and the symptom stickers and the tracking, all of that, I thought out very carefully to make it positive so that there isn’t an overall kind of negative slant on the idea of having periods. Which I felt like even the best apps out there that give really amazing information, have lots of tracking options, often they still have an overall dominance of negative. It’s not positive.

And so I thought that was really important to not scare and to allow for that body connection to develop and flourish at a time when it’s really important that it does.

And then the other side of it for me as well, you know, for bringing in this basal body temperature, it’s the first time that that’s ever been done in a kind of brand way for teenagers and pre-teens. Then what’s the possibility there for accurate tracking for their normally very irregular cycles? So, you know, a lot of parents don’t know that their teen will have irregular cycles and that’s kind of normal when the reproductive system is maturing, or that they may have heavier periods or more painful periods, and these things.

And the possibilities of avoiding the surprise of a period when you’re that age in the school was really important to me too because I felt like we can’t change the environment, we can’t change how people respond to girls getting their periods and the sort of menstrual taboo in our society. But you can change how the girls understand and know their periods and also how accurately they can track them for themselves. So they feel in control, able to manage them in a way that protects them essentially from a lot of that shame and embarrassment, but also gives them the confidence and knowledge that they need to feel good about it. To feel like, no, this is normal. This is healthy.

And I felt like we were really building on what was happening already which is that, you know, we know like there’s a whole shift generationally with period talk and like openness and transparency about periods and young people feeling like, yeah, no, I’m not going to hide that I’m taking my tampon to the bathroom, or I’m going to campaign to have my school provide free products in the bathroom. And there’s so much more transparency, but a lot of it is still very much focused on menstrual management, like how to manage just having the period.

And a lot of young girls were not being taught, especially not in schools, that you’re always experiencing a cycle, that there are these two phases and these two events. And that that could give them a lot of empowering information and confidence too. So yeah, that’s kind of where we came from with it. So I worked mostly on the app, the content and the tracking capabilities and the design and stuff. And then it can sync also to the Teena basal body temperature-based device.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, that’s amazing. I mean, congratulations. What a huge undertaking. And it’s so interesting, because as you can imagine, I’ve had all these conversations in podcast interviews and things. And the hot question is always like, well, what kind of birth control do you recommend for teens? And I always say condoms.

Holly Grigg-Spall: Yeah, that’s what I always say. And when we had—so Teena had a couple of viral posts go out last week. And a lot of the sort of most of the response was very positive. But there are a lot of the defensive response definitely came from this assumption of young girls tracking their cycles or tracking menstrual cycles, immediately people assume they’re doing it because of they’re having sex or they need to avoid pregnancy or that we’re encouraging that that is a way to avoid pregnancy when you’re a teenager. And in their minds, immediately go to that and their assumptions that body literacy is only useful for in the realm of sex.

Which is a real shame because—and it shows how sometimes these things can get solidified and simplified into like we’re seeing like natural birth control rather than seeing it as like something that’s more bigger and more powerful for women. Because I think that menstrual health conversation, I’m sure you feel the same way, is valuable in its own right and can start earlier than perhaps conversations would start about sex and reproduction.

And it’s why Teena, it’s the way I designed the app, is for it to be given space and highlight and spotlight in its own right. So we don’t talk about that. So ovulation isn’t framed as around reproduction or pregnancy. It’s framed as around what hormones are produced at that time and the creative energy that you have at that time. Which is something I think that is not only more engaging for an eight-year-old, but is—many more parents would feel more comfortable starting to talk about menstrual health earlier, and it’s really important to talk about earlier, as young girls are getting their periods earlier, if it isn’t immediately linked and tied in with sex and sexuality and reproduction.

And I felt that that was missing too, that some parents would be sidestepping and avoiding that conversation because they didn’t think it was the right time to talk about that. But we really, we really need to be talking about menstrual health and menstrual cycles early. And so that’s the way that we designed and the way that I wrote all the content for Teena was to make sure that that was the spotlight.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: I can just imagine, Holly, when you’re having these conversations outside of the bubble, that people are just like, their minds are blown, like, oh my goodness, like, how did you even think of this? And as someone who’s been in the field, I mean, it makes just, it’s just like a logical next step in my mind, right? Because I have spent a lot of time thinking about this fertility awareness stuff, you know, but body literacy is a separate thing. Like, you can, you can have, like, as long as you can get that far where—yes, I talk about it in a very practical way, because the adult women who I serve are typically sexually active, not always and not always with an opposite-sex partner, but the vast majority are typically sexually active, or if they’re not currently sexually active, they’re planning to be—like, so it’s a different conversation with adults.

But if we talk about the concept of body literacy, you know, going back to like the condom comment and exactly what you were saying, it’s that, yeah, this is a whole other thing before we even bring in how to apply it in a practical sense. The knowledge base and foundation is really—it doesn’t have to have anything to do with that.

And one controversial thing that I will say is that I think ultimately it does give these young girls a solid foundation of knowledge and information and appreciation, like you said, a positive way about their bodies. So if we empower them with that information, wouldn’t it be nice to have a generation of young women who actually understand how birth control works and know that, oh, wait, when I take this, it means I’m not making those hormones. So like, what happens to my cycle? Imagine if you just had even enough knowledge to ask those questions.

And yes, that means that there could potentially be a larger proportion of older teenagers, young 20s, who then choose to use like a fertility awareness-based method in conjunction with their barriers or whatever, like it’s possible. But it doesn’t mean that just because we’re talking about it they would go either way. I’ve had plenty of conversations with fertility awareness educator friends and people in this community who have a niece or a friend or like a young woman in their lives who they fully like blasted all the information to, yet they still chose hormonal contraceptives.

But I always say, although, you know, that’s an interesting conversation, right? Because it’s like, oh, you know, the side effects. And but if you’ve educated her, she knows. So at least if she starts to have these types of side effects and things like that, she’s in a much better position than all of the other, you know, average women out there who really have no idea and may be experiencing some of those side effects but it takes like a midnight Googling session to actually make that connection.

Holly Grigg-Spall: Yeah, and I took the pill as a teen. I had really heavy painful periods that made me faint outright in school, like awful. And would I do it again? Probably did, would, to be honest. It was that bad. I mean, I’m not in the business of stopping people taking the pill. That’s the other misconception about my previous work.

And my, you know, the only agenda for Teena was that there’s research that shows that young girls’ self-esteem really like takes a massive fall after that first period and the puberty changes that go up more quickly and in earnest after that time. And that’s partly of course because of how they are received once they enter into puberty and have their periods and how people respond to them and how men respond to them, of course.

But it’s also what we teach girls about having periods is that they’re like a nuisance and a curse and an awful thing to endure. And it’s what mums are teaching them, it’s what schools are teaching them, it’s what the culture is teaching them, that this is all like a bad experience that you just have to get through and it’s your burden. And it’s not given any kind of positive slant, or it’s not—and that is all because a lot of it is because they don’t—we aren’t giving body literacy.

Which I think once you know the whole cycle and once you know what’s going on, even if you have really difficult periods that are stopping you doing things you want to do, at least, you know, you have that knowledge, you have that context. It doesn’t feel like something being done—terrible thing being done to you. You understand why it’s happening and hopefully you are able to deal with it more effectively as well.

And I think, you know, that’s very important. And I think also, you know, just having this information at that early age has the possibility to give them much more access to higher self-esteem and body connection, and also be able down the line to feel differently about themselves, so that the way they interact with other people is differently. The way they develop relationships is different. The way that they go into their first relationship is different. The way they understand themselves, the way they understand that they may feel differently in the follicular phase or the luteal phase, and all these things about self-acceptance and body positivity from the inside out that we’re really not giving.

And, you know, that goes all the way down the line. I mean, at this point, yes, maybe—we’re more so, there’s going to be young girls who like myself go on the pill in their teens and then don’t come off perhaps until they want to have children. And then they learn all this information. If they could be taught all this information in their teens and then, even if they then choose to go on the pill, that’s not the first time they’re hearing about the fact that they have different phases and about ovulation and what it is and about hormones that go into that and about the brain-ovary connection. And I think that in itself could have really positive effects for women’s health and how we treat women’s health issues and their diagnosis and all these things as well.

So I think there’s lots of possibilities there. And, you know, it’s interesting that we still so—we can find it so triggering to talk about it as a teen aspect. And there’s like, there’s something that teenagers would want to know regardless of how we use it. It’s like you said, body literacy is really the bigger idea than fertility awareness.

And I’ve always felt like I was more of a body literacy advocate than a fertility awareness advocate. I’m not a practitioner. I haven’t trained in it. I haven’t taught people fertility awareness beyond, this thing, your fertility cycle exists and these are the signs. I’ve always been much more like, if you can just know that you don’t ovulate on day 14 every cycle or that it’s a movable point, or if you can just know about cervical fluid, or if you can just know that there are phases, that’s great. Good. Just learn a bit and learn a bit more because it will be life-changing over time anyway, wherever you’re at on that journey with learning.

And, yeah, I’ve always come from that place. And so to me, yes, it seems a little like, oh, it’s strange that you think of it like that, because I’ve never thought of it like that. I’ve always thought of it like, why wouldn’t you teach girls in high school body literacy? Because it could have so many benefits and so many good outcomes that meet the goals that people have already about encouraging girls to feel good about themselves and feel good about their bodies and mental health and consent issues and all these things. There’s so many, so many different things that it plays into.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Well, and one of the things I always say is I remember high school, you know, I remember learning in biology class all the stuff about the ear, the inner ear, like the hammer and—like someone who is really good in anatomy is laughing at me. But I learned all this information. And yet, one of the most important aspects of your life, whether you want children or not, I mean, how many women struggle with ridiculous symptoms, whether it’s irregular cycles or endo or whatever. And literally, we’re never told anything about it.

So thank you, Holly, on behalf of the community. And we’re not talking about it in a relatable way either. Like there’s one thing to be like on, you know, this is a picture of the uterus, this is the menstrual cycle. But to actually integrate it into lives, which is what with the Teena app we’re doing, like these are your affirmations, these are your cycle tips for where you are, this is what cycle phase you’re in because you’re tracking your cycle. As you integrate it into their lives rather than it being a lesson or a class or an hour.

Because it is, it’s literally a part of your life. And it affects—if you’re a cycling woman, a person who has cycles, it is a part of your day-to-day life. And if you can learn to live with it, I mean, that’s a big part of my message too. That’s where the fifth vital sign aspect comes in. Of course, I tie in the health aspect in a really specific way, since my information is geared to adult women. But ultimately, it’s a dance, you’re constantly in a dance with your cycle and it has an effect on your day-to-day life. And it just makes perfect sense.

And I thought of something that I often say as well, which is, well, Holly, if you didn’t make this app, you know, who’s going to do it? So we can sit around and complain and be upset the fact that, you know, the industry or the pharma, whatever, isn’t concerned about our menstrual cycles. But it doesn’t matter because we are the ones that have to take it into our hands to make it. So if you didn’t do it, it wouldn’t be here. It wouldn’t be made.

Holly Grigg-Spall: No, it’s not coming from the top down.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Exactly. It’s not coming from the top down. Nobody’s coming along to fix it.

Holly Grigg-Spall: No one’s going to fix it. And it’s been 10 years since my book came out and it’s still pretty much the same, although there’s a lot more IUDs, hormonal IUDs on the market than there were back then.

So yes, exactly. You have to make the change happen. And the change happens with knowledge and this wellness perspective and teaching people about the fifth vital sign when it is most important that they learn it, which is young and early, really, rather than going in when they’re older, as you do often, and you obviously combating lots of assumptions and preconditions and thoughts and, you know, overcoming all of those. It becomes harder and more work.

But yeah, I think that’s exactly it. You have to do, you have to do what you can to change things. And when my book came out, you know, all those years ago, people would say, oh, you know, how, what, how can we change things? How can we make it so that this is a more—this knowledge is available, and there are more options? And this is kind of to me how you do it.

So this is my life purpose. This is why it’s so important to me, this project, because it really is something that I believed in and talked about for so long. And it’s my way of doing that, my way of trying to instigate that.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: I love it, love it so much. Well, I mean, I could talk to you all day, obviously. It’s always a pleasure talking to you. As we start to wrap up, could you share with us then all the places? So tell us how we can watch The Business of Birth Control. Tell us where we can get your book, Sweetening the Pill, and tell us where we can learn more about Teena.

Holly Grigg-Spall: So if you go to thebusinessofbirthcontrol.com, you can watch on the website. You can rent or buy the movie there. And you can also get it on Prime Video in the US, Canada, and the UK and Germany. So that’s Amazon Prime Video to rent.

My book is at sweeteningthepill.com or Amazon or wherever you buy your books, actually not wherever. During the pandemic, it dropped off a lot of the independent booksellers, unfortunately. So mostly Amazon is the only place that will stock it.

And then Teena is T-E-E-N-A. And it’s myteena.com. And you can download that app for free whenever you want. And the US, the UK, most EU countries, not yet Canada or Australia. We’re working on that. And check it out at myteena.com is where you can see the device. And you can follow us at @weareteena on Instagram and TikTok as well for lots of like teen-focused education.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: Amazing. Well, I’ll make sure to link all the places. Thank you so much, Holly. This has been such a great conversation. And I just love that full circle moment. And I’m actually excited to see what you do next, because I feel like there’s always exciting things coming from you.

Holly Grigg-Spall: So I’m definitely not getting out of this world, though, not having a total career change, apparently.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: No, but it’s really, once you’re in, you never get out.

Holly Grigg-Spall: It’s true.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: But I mean, if you think about like all the—and I’m only talking about what you’ve done in the past 10 years, right? Like, all of the different things and the contributions you’ve made to the community. I mean, sometimes I think about that as well. I don’t know that we’ve hit critical mass, right, in this conversation of birth control or like fertility. I don’t think we have. But one thing I can say is that the landscape is so different now. So many more people know about this. Although it’s not every woman yet, it’s still a lot, like the leaps and bounds compared to when I first learned fertility awareness when no one had cell phones and people had to go to libraries to learn about it. And literally no one knew about it. I mean, that’s something. And I feel like that’s a huge accomplishment. And I’m so pleased to be part of that, as I’m sure you are too.

Holly Grigg-Spall: Thank you again so much.

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack: And thank you. Yeah, I’ll talk to you soon.

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/476.

I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode with Holly. It was a great opportunity for us to chat and reconnect. I haven’t had her on the show for quite a while and will link the previous episodes with Holly in the show notes page.

Holly was one of my first interviews in the first year that I released the podcast. So if I remember correctly, her episode is in the 20s or something like that. And we are currently almost at episode 500. And so it’s been really interesting to not only see the progression of her work, the documentary based on her book come to fruition, but it’s also been interesting to reflect over the past decade what has happened in the world of feminism and where the birth control pill falls into all of this.

And I do find it very fascinating to be able to sit back and reflect on how things have changed and how the conversation around this topic has changed as well. So I hope that you enjoyed our conversation. And of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.