Recently, the birth control pill celebrated its fiftieth birthday. Today, it’s estimated that more than one hundred million women around the world use an oral contraceptive. For many women, it’s the little pink pill that launched a thousand (relation)ships. For many scientists, it’s the little pink pill that launched a thousand studies.
“Good Genes” or Bad Idea Jeans?
Maybe it’s not exactly a thousand studies, but in the past ten years, over a dozen studies have been done by evolutionary psychologists on the shifts in a woman’s mate preferences over the stages of her cycle. When women are ovulating (when their pump is primed for baby-making, so to speak), they tend to be attracted to more “manly” men—men who exhibit traits that indicate strength and dominance, such as a deep voice or a square chin. They also tend to be attracted to men with genetic makeups different from their own. Evolutionarily speaking, this is advantageous because their offspring would be healthier. Scientists call this the “good gene” theory.
But what happens when the Pill is brought into the mix? The birth control pill works by suppressing key hormones involved in ovulation, keeping you from releasing eggs. This begs the question: no ovulation, no wildly irrational attraction to the Old Spice guy mid-month? A 2009 study at a British university suggests just that. The study’s authors found that the Pill affected women’s mate preferences. Unlike their ovulating counterparts, women on oral contraceptives were more likely to choose men with less pronouncedly masculine traits and more genetic similarity.
Women aren’t the only ones whose choice of horizontal dance partner is affected by the Pill, however. Studies have also shown that men are more attracted to women who are ovulating. (One study even showed that lap dancers received higher tips when ovulating.) Men subconsciously pick up on this peak fertility through pheromones and other subtle physical and behavioral clues, such as a higher pitched voice and better grooming. (Ovulating women are more likely to primp and preen—all the better to catch that strapping stud.) Which means, at least biologically speaking, the Pill makes its non-ovulating, hormonally steady takers less attractive to members of the opposite sex.
The Pill’s effects aren’t permanent. When a woman stops taking it, her hormones return to their natural cycle and she starts to ovulate again. This might explain why the woman who married the IT guy who looks like her brother suddenly finds herself fantasizing about burly Argentinean lumberjacks.
