There Are No Girls on the Internet - The Wellness Influencer Rebrand of Birth Control Misinformation

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

Birth control is the latest battleground in a wave of online misinformation targeting young women — and doctors and reproductive health advocates are sounding the alarm about its impact. But this isn’t your typical fearmongering about birth control coming from Bible-thumpers or conservative men in suits. This new wave is coming from wellness influencers — the ones in matching pastel workout sets — who are linking a “balanced, natural life” with ditching hormonal birth control. Bridget explains to Stuff Mom Never Told You’s Samantha and Anney why this may look like a rebrand, but this kind of misinformation is just as harmful as ever.  You can find more information about the safety and effectiveness of birth control in this article from the American Medical Association: https://www.ama-assn.org/public-health/population-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-birth-control    If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there to let us know what you thought about this episode, or email us at [e-mail]    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Birth Control is the latest battleground in a wave of online misinformation targeting young people, and doctors and reproductive health advocates are sounding the alarm about its impacts. But this isn't just your typical fear-mongering about birth control, the kind coming from Bible thumpers or conservative politicians in suits. This new wave is coming from wellness influencers, the ones in matching pastel workout sets,

who are linking a balanced natural life with ditching hormonal birth control. And while it may look like a rebrand, this kind of misinformation is as harmful as ever. To unpack what's going on, I spoke with my friend Samantha and Annie over at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You. We were talking right around Halloween, so of course we had to start with our opinions on horror movies. Because what's scarier than wellness misinformation, right? What's funny to me is both of you had to sneak to watch horror. as youth, I grew up in the opposite household. I was my dad was the person who was taking a much too young child to the theater to see horror movies.

And we would, this is not going to make him sound like a great parent, which I swear he was. But we would stay up late to watch Tales from the Crip together, which to this day, I love Tales from the Cript. It's hard to find. You can watch it probably bootleg on YouTube. but there was a time in my life like maybe a year ago when I was having a really tough time and I was like

would it be weird to buy myself a cameo from the cryptkeeper where it's just like a cameo to me from me where the cryptkeeper is giving me a message would that be weird I decided it would be but like that's how much I love tales from the crypt

and horror anthology in general yeah you know I remember as you say that I remember sneaking episodes of that as well as the new twilight zone? Do you know what I'm talking about? It wasn't the old one. It was a newer version that also really twisted. Like I remember the lottery was, uh, do you know what I'm talking about? That episode, The Lottery on a Twilight Zone and everything ends up bad. Kind of the same thing with a crickaper. And I remember a haunted house on that one. Like I remember those episodes because they were like short shots of something haunting that never really had a good ending. And you're just like, yeah, it's getting more than that. Yeah, I'm a sucker for the Twilight Zone and horror anthologies in general where it has some sort of a twist ending where, oh no, it was, you know what I'm saying. You've made this happen to yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

To cook, man. No. Like, the real monsters were man all along. I love a, I'm a sucker for a, a like, artistic twist. And they even make fun of it on the Futurama where time enough to read, I broke my glasses. Oh, well, I can still read the large print books.

My eyes fell out. I'm a sucker for that. Yes. Well, I think you should also definitely buy that cameo because sometimes you just need a pep talk. And we might not have that in one of your favorite childhood memories. That's the best.

Oh, my God. When I was a kid, I used to do a cryptkeeper impression. I used to do impress. This is so, such a tangent. impressions of the cryptkeeper and the way that the Martians speak on Mars attacks. And my brother would die laughing. He would be bold over. Those are my two, the two impressions I had when I was a child.

Wait now on it. Can we request a came to you for us? Can I make some extra money doing a cryptkeeper cameos? I would be there. I would pay. Yes. Yes. This do this.

Oh, wow. I love that so much. Oh, well, this is kind of an unfortunate segue, but it is true that every time Halloween comes around, there's kind of a strange tension for me, because usually there's both an election coming up. But also, you know, when you talk about like what you're really afraid of, there's sort of the... horror movie answer, which is very scary. And then there's like the real world answer that we're living in, which is also scary. So it's sort of every time I'm always like, I love this more Halloween seasonal horror movie thing, but there's also this real world horrific thing that's happening.

Oh, yes. Yeah. What is scarier than things like misinformation. I mean, if there could be an evil cackle right now, there should be. That's my third keeper laugh. There it is. Oh, wow. I love it.

That was so good. We're going to mark that. I won't do that again, everybody. I apologize. We're going to save that. We're going to use that as like a meme or something. I don't know how I do with this. Someone put it as a sound cover.

That was amazing. Thank you so much. So good. But yes, we are talking about a lot of misinformation today and specifically around a certain topic, right, Bridget? That is right, because if y'all have spent any time at all on TikTok lately, I probably don't need to tell you that social media platforms are awash in misinformation about hormonal birth control. And I actually find it interesting, but also kind of very telling that I'm not

talking about content that is warning about some specific size. effect really about birth control. What I'm talking about is sort of this content that has a fit looking young woman influencer type promising that you will kind of get a vague feeling of feeling more like you if you go off birth control. And so the question they sort of ask is, who am I without birth control? Will I feel some sort of a positive difference if I stop using it? Yeah. And you know, this is not new, but it's definitely been amplified by social media and these influencers spreading the message. Oh, yes. And I guess like that, like the thing that social media is specifically flooded with

is this sort of vibe-based reasoning for coming off birth control, right? It's not, I'm having this specific side effect or this specific issue or use case. It's, no, the, the vibes are all are terrible for birth control. And there was a really great piece in the New York Times called Who Am I Without Birth Control that I looked at that really examines how misinformation around birth control is impacting real women. They chronicled a young woman named Ashley, who was 26. They write, she had started taking birth control pills a decade earlier when she was 15. Now as she browsed her social media feeds, she kept stumbling on videos of women saying how much

better they felt when they stopped taking the pill. Content she was not seeking out. The post typically went like this, a glowing blonde in a workout top, the picture of health, saying that she stopped taking birth control pills and immediately. felt more clarity of mind, like an emotional fog had lifted, like she was a brand new, much happier person. So Ashley, seeing all of this, decides to go off birth control pills, cold turkey, which is not recommended by doctors, even though she is in a newish relationship with someone, and they've both agreed it is too early to even be thinking about kids. So,

who is Ashley without birth control? Well, it turns out she's a mom, because just one year after she stopped taking her pill, those pills, she became a mother. Her baby was four months old when that article was written. And so I thought that was such a funny way for the article to start, thinking that if I go off the pill, I'll have some vaguely better life. And it's like, no, who are you not on the pill? Probably a parent, to be honest. If you're having sex, probably a parent.

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There's so much to this conversation because I think we've already kind of hinted towards things like this in our talk about trad wives. And then also the yoga pipeline, the influencers in that wellness circle where we talk about this level of misinformation and being like if you do all these things naturally, that you're going to be so blessed with just being a stay-at-home mom and being able to to take care of your family and yourself, you're going to feel healthy and light and young and feel complete.

But all this is in a rhetoric to a very, very dangerous conversation about the loss of rights for those who are marginalized and specifically those who have uteruses in this moment. But they are really doing a great job and changing that feminism is being able to be a mom and stay at home. Wouldn't you rather do that than have to struggle

by yourself in a world that doesn't appreciate you type of conversation. So it seems like this is one more narrative for the wellness chain, which is an odd and very tricky, tricky conversation. Oh, yeah, you put that so well. And, you know, there is nothing wrong with wanting to become a parent. There's nothing wrong with staying at home and not doing wage earning work. If that is your choice and you can swing it.

All of those things are great. And the point of feminism is that people should be able to have the choices that work for them. However, having an entire media ecosystem that essentially rebrands having less control and less autonomy into good things is not a dynamic where people get to make their own decisions really. When you are being algorithmically fed and serviced, because remember Ashley said that she was not even seeking out content about the dangers of birth control that content found her. when you are awash in that kind of rhetoric and that kind of misinformation, I would argue that you are not really in a dynamic where you're able to make real choices for yourself. And yeah, social media content and podcasts, they are an entire media ecosystem spreading and amplifying

misinformation about birth control. And interestingly, they're not explicitly warning against birth control for religious or political reasons, right? The same way, Sam, that you were saying, oh, it's so easy these days to just have it. Oh, I'm just into yoga and wellness. Three swipes later and you're looking at Nazi content, right? Like, it's so easy. And a lot of that stuff, they're able to use things that feel non-political. And they're not being talked about explicitly as political, but they are political.

And so with this kind of birth control misinformation that we're seeing increasingly on social media, it doesn't come out and say, hey, we're anti-birth. control for political or religious reasons, it's because birth control is bad for you. And so I think that that is a pretty insidious approach because just like wellness, other kinds of wellness, it doesn't just appeal to people who are political or religious. It also just appeals to people who are concerned about their overall health or wellness. And so increasing this message says that being on birth control is at odds with being healthy, well and quote pure.

Like that is the underlying message being presented here. That makes me want to throw on my computer because I swear to God it took us so long to get to the point that women can say, this is a hormonal imbalance issue for me and I have been struggling all in my life as a teen having

pains where it took me out for two or three days or having this mood disorders that did not make sense and feeling like I'm in hell every period or rough three weeks out of the month. Like I remember growing up being told these are the things. That's just being a woman.

And it took us of so long to finally get to a point and be like, oh, maybe we should, there should be research and there should be medical actions that can happen that could help us. And I felt like we were there for like just a split second. Like we were actually accepting that as an, okay, that might be okay for us to have. Yeah. And I'm glad that you said that because I want to be like very clear. hormonal worth control is not for everyone.

It can have side effects. Case in point, it was not a good option for me because it gave me headaches. So this is not me saying everybody should go out there and get on the hormonal birth control. People should talk to their doctor and figure out what kind of birth control is right for them. If birth control is right for them, there are all kinds of non-hormonal birth control options to consider. Again, people should be talking to their medical professionals. They should not be trusting random influencers on social media or random. random podcasters.

But right now, those are the people who are really speaking the loudest and frankly kind of owning the conversation about birth control. And people are listening. They really have an audience. And it's coming back. We're coming back to that old school thought of you just need to deal with it. It's putting more things in your body doesn't help you, all these things. And really being like you need to let your body work itself out and really telling people to

suffer because it's the way. wellness thing. It's like literally. Yeah, you want to be pure, you know, it's just, birth control is just bad for you. And honestly, the kinds of stuff that people say about birth control is crap. Just a little bit of a summary. So Alex Clark, who hosts culture apothecary, which is sort of a conservative wellness podcast on the late Charlie Kirk's network turning points USA. She has suggested that the way that women are prescribed birth control is linked to fertility issues, which it isn't. She's also, even said that birth control pills can falsely make women feel

what they might be bisexual, which I don't think I need to tell anybody, but just in case, that's not true. Birth control pills cannot turn you queer or gay. I'm sorry, that was such, that was a genuine reaction. I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready. On an episode of Joe Rogan's podcast, Callie Means, who now is an advisor to health secretary,

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. basically said that the medical industry views birth control as recurring revenue. And that the reason that they're trying to get people to take the pill is because it's recurring revenue and that, oh, if you can get somebody to be on the pill, they're going to be taking it for most of their lives. And it's this implied conspiracy that, no, no, this is not medication that might genuinely help somebody or might genuinely give somebody more autonomy or more choice. No, no, no, no, no. It's a way to just make big pharma is making money off of you to harm you. God, they are so good about taking this type of rhetoric. And I say they as being like anti-abortion slash anti-euterus, anti-marginalist people group community and taking things and making sure to do a conspiracy to really freak everybody out. Be like, no, no, but this is what's really happening. It's not because I'm being anti-abortion. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. And so, like, it's so true because when you look up birth control on TikTok, you'll find

women talking about how birth control like rub into their bodies, quote unquote, by making them gain weight or tanking their libidos. And these are things that actually can be symptoms of hormonal birth control, so they're not wrong. But the thing is, like, if I were to make a TikTok about how my doctor took me off birth control because it was giving me headaches, this is not going to be advice for everybody, right? Like, it's very specific to me in my body. And importantly, the dominant men. messages on social media, frame birth control as a conversation that is not like, oh, talk to your

doctor if birth control is giving you this specific side effect. No, no, no. It is your doctor is in cahoots with the government to lie to you by actually forcing you to be on birth control that is harming you, right? It's, it's, I honestly wouldn't have a problem with, well, I don't know. I guess I feel like it gets dicey when you're, when you're putting medical advice online if you're not a doctor. But I honestly wouldn't have that big of a problem with it. If it was just like, here's my side effect and this is what I did. Instead, it's this purposely conspiratorial thing that is so obviously being phrased in the most inflammatory way to get engagement. Like the New York Times spoke to one of these influencers who has like just under 100,000 followers who went on TikTok and talked about birth control as being evil and then said, well, obviously I exaggerate.

social media, you can't have a lukewarm take. And I'm thinking, do you really want to be taking medical advice from an influencer who is openly telling the New York Times that she needs to make things as spicy and inflammatory as possible to get views on social media? Like, do you not see the way that she's incentivized to essentially tell the most extreme story of something as important as your health? Again, it goes back to also in my mind, like, they're not completely wrong. When it comes to women's health, they don't care. So they, they being pharmaceuticals, I sound very very conspiratory right now, in that level of like, they do want to make money. It's the same reason why period products are not offered for free and there's an increase and there's tax on it because

they can make more money and they know that it's needed. And instead of helping to have a cost-efficient way of treating women, as well as actually researching on how the best way to help, because some of the beginning of birth control was real gross. really eugenics what? It was real gross. Let's be real clear on that. But instead of actually seeking to help women, it kind of had turned the other way of like, eh, we don't care

enough about helping people with the uteruses. We don't really want to help them. But if we're going to, we're going to make it as least effective or as many side effects so we can also make money and let them know this is your only solution. There's this level of like, you're not completely

wrong. But instead of helping in a right way, you're just making us go back 20 steps. Yeah, and bad actors are so good at exploiting that kind of kernel of truth. That's what they do, right? And so I get it because, listen, traditionally marginalized people, especially women, are often not listened to by medical professionals, are often not treated with respect or care.

Oftentimes when you're talking about medicines and medical things, these are things that were not tested or researched on our body specifically. So all of that is true. and we're right to be pissed off about that. We're right to call that out. But what these content creators do is that they swoop in and exploit that very real problem, that very real issue and use it to push potentially harmful, untrue messages about our health. And so, yeah, I completely agree that they're not wrong and they're not wrong to be skeptical,

paranoid all of that. But then you have these influencers basically. filling the void with lies, lies that lead to people feeling more anxious and more suspicious. When the New York Times surveyed women about how our current social media climate is making them think about birth control, these messages did not just make them want to stop using birth control. It made them fearful, paranoid, anxious, suspicious, specifically suspicious of their own doctors and made them feel more trust toward random influence. or podcasters. So you can see why exploiting that kernel of truth would materially benefit bad actors who are pushing these lives of abhorst control. Yeah. And I think there's so much going on right now with the erosion of trust that has been ongoing, but you got like

RFK Jr. and he's just pushing out all of these these things about, you know, what feel like conspiracy theories to me, but to other people. seem like truths. I have a friend who worked at the CDC and she was saying, you know, COVID really exacerbated a lot of things because we were trying to get this vaccine out. But every day, like, what we knew about it was changing. And so people started to view that with mistrust. So you've got like this building mistrust. And then as we talked about in the episode we did about chat GPT and people seeking out health advice from chat GPT, where it's so expensive to go to a doctor or to go to a hospital. And so people are turning to technology. And people are turning to these influencers.

And they're telling you, like, this is what you have to do. This is like, it worked for me. And it's very, it's a nice thing to believe. It's a nice thing to think, oh, I could control that. if I just stop taking birth control, then maybe I will be more in control of my body. You know, you couple that was like lack of sexual education. It's just a real mess that we have going on right now. And I think I like that comparison to the chat GPT example

because, you know, I don't want to shame anybody who is using chat GPT or Dr. Google to figure out what's wrong with them in a climate where, just having access to medical care is so inaccessible. However, the answer to me is not, here, take this unreliable tool, chat GPT, and use that. The answer is, let's make healthcare more accessible for everybody. And I think similarly, the answer here should not be, oh, well, let's just have an entire ecosystem of podcasters and influencers who are personally incentivized to make people fearful.

it's let's have a medical industry that actually listens to people and that people feel like they can actually trust like it's such a it's it's it's it's just not a real solution i understand how in a climate where it is confusing to figure out decisions for your own health and your own body and we have people who i would say are influencers at the highest level of government making our health decisions i understand it's a it is a funky climate but the answer is not that's not the answer is oh, just empower the influencers and podcasters to essentially act as doctors now. It is how do we have a more reasonable climate that people can trust when it comes to our health and our bodies? Absolutely.

And I really found this next part you have in your outline really interesting because I never heard of it before. I'm very familiar with the placebo effects. But I was not familiar with its polar opposite. it. Yes, the nocebo effect. So that comes from doctors Rebecca Webster and Lorna Reed, the co-authors of a first of its kind study in a journal called Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. So they coined the nocebo effect, which is kind of the opposite of the placebo effect where when people start taking a medication, they then start associating that medication with negative impacts, right? So placebo effect is I have not been given a medication, but I think it's working for me. I think I have positive impacts because of it, even though I didn't really take it. The opposite of that is, I am genuinely taking the medicine and now I am associating it with negative impact. And so their study found that the nocebo effect involved four psychological factors that were associated with women having a negative experience of hormonal birth control pills. They were an expectation at the outset that the pill would be harmful, low confidence in how medicines are developed, a belief that medicines are overused and harmful, and a belief that they are sensitive to medicines. So yeah, it is interesting that, you know, when people are taking medication, they would then be reporting, oh, it has made me fearful of this medication and it has made me not trust this medication.

And social media, we almost kind of can't talk about this phenomenon without talking about social media because it's definitely a factor. Earlier this year, a study by public health researchers at La Trobe University found that among the top 100 TikTok videos about reproductive health, just 10% percent. were from medical professionals. About 50% of creators made comments rejecting hormonal contraception. The top 100 most popular TikToks about birth control had amassed some 5 billion views. And so think about that.

There's just, it's just that much more difficult for accurate content, let alone accurate content that is being made by an actual healthcare professional to get traction when you're talking about a climate like TikTok where overwhelmingly the content that is doing well and performing well and being surfaced for folks is content that is made by influencers and content creators

that is not based an actual fact about reproductive care. Yeah, I'm starting to getting a lot of stuff on my specific TikTok where I'm like, Oracle, I feel like it's already having a lot of influence. And I'm sure, Bridget, you may have already talked about it on your show or you're thinking on it, whatever, whatnot with the whole new takeover. with the company that is very much associated with the Trump administration, Peter Thill, all those people. And then there's even some more worse players that I can't remember their name because they're so dark to me. It's funny that you mentioned Peter Thiel because that podcaster I was talking about at the time spoke to, Alex Clark, from the conservative wellness podcast culture apothecary.

She says something that I hear quite a bit. She says, oh, well, I don't use birth control and you don't actually need birth control if you just track. your period. She says, we are not given full informed consent when it comes to the pill. Clark began taking hormonal birth control as a teenager and stopped in 2018, eventually switching to tracking her menstrual cycle on her phone. She says she has used the apps flow and 28, the last of which was founded by the creators of the conservative EV magazine, which we talked about, you and I all in the show, and backed by right-wing kingmaker Peter Thiel. Both are a fast-growing multi-billion dollar market for women's health technology.

So this is something that I often hear in this space, like, oh, you don't need birth control if you just track your cycle. And conveniently, you can use these apps owned by billionaire Trump crony. And if you watch that South Park episode like Antichrist expert himself, Peter Thiel, or apps like Flow, which just this year, a California jury found that meta, a legally collected user health data from Flow violating the state's wiretap law, this verdict found that Flow. Google, Meta, and another app analytics company called Flurry, we're collecting people's private menstrual health data without consent for targeted advertising. So, yeah, super convenient. Don't use hormonal birth control because it's so dangerous. Instead, use this app owned by a Republican technocrat or this app that the court says

will share your intimate menstrual data for money. Oh, God, this is a nightmare and horror movie. I told you. I will say, the cryptkeeper, never get mixed up in any of this. He's very pro-reproductive rights for women. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite.

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Podcasts for wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Social media has done so much for good and bad. Like there's so many things that we are able to access so much more and seeing around the world and get a little more information and data and truths, but also a lot of the misinformation and disinformation that we have continually had to talk about because it's only getting worse. But like it reminds me, again, of like people talking, trying to use the,

ejaculation or the minute that sperm comes, that's killing a baby. If you... I'm sorry. I'm laughing at myself in this context. And for so long, I've heard my own people, like my age group of people, very intellectual, like even like pro choice before, tell me after they had a baby, no, yeah, I can't use hormonal birth control because it kills, you know, it has spermicide. And that means it's killing babies.

And I cannot do that as a part of my religion. But now it's flipped that because it may have worked on a few, but it's starting to work less and less. And so now that I feel like this is its way of new talking and be like, no, no, no, we're not going to talk about that as the actual problem. Oh, yeah. I mean, we had that. That's a very common piece of misinformation about contraceptives is that they are the same as abortives or abortions. The Trump administration just this year was trying to falsely claim that certain forms of birth control are essentially the same. same thing as abortions in an effort to restrict access to contraceptives.

And so there's nothing wrong with abortion, but abortion and birth control, as hopefully we all learned in health class, are two different things. And so if contraceptives are trying to prevent like an egg being fertilized, if you have no fertilized egg, it's not the same thing as an abortion. But the Trump administration was trying to use this sort of tricky, false logic to essentially further restrict birth control and reproductive health more generally. Like that's really what it was. But so like that is an incredibly common piece of misinformation. And yeah, it just sucks that we're in a place where it's not just being traded around the back

of the bus or, you know, on TikTok. It is in our government. Yeah. And we are seeing the fallout and impacts of this. One thing I find interesting is I do, I have some friends who are nurses and they told me before you know, people come in, people have always come in since the internet has been a thing and been like, you know,

I saw on WebMD, I have this. But now they're kind of coming in with this I saw on TikTok. Is this a thing? Should I be worried about this? And it's just another task for them to take on of almost educating like, no, no, no, no. That's not what's going on.

But there have been some fallouts, some were measurable than others, right? Yeah. So the question that I had is, well, it definitely seems like misinformation about birth control is, it's our platforms are awash in it, but is it having an impact? And it's a little bit hard to say it depends on who you ask. So the New York Times worked with this company, Trilient Health, a health care analytics company, and they conducted an analysis for the Times and found a decrease in the use of hormonal birth control pills among women age 18 to 44.

In 2019, 13.1% of women said that they used the pill in 2024. That number fell to 10.2%. But researchers at the Guttacher Institute, which is like an abortion rights organization, they say that they have not seen an indication of a population level decrease in hormonal contraceptive use per their analysis of data from the National Center for Health Statistics. And so it's not totally clear if this is having a specific,

impact if people actually are abandoning hormonal birth control. It's possible that even if they are, they're using some other kind of birth control. But we can't not talk about the way that this is happening against this backdrop of an administration that is clearly just hostile toward birth control and reproductive health care in general. This spring, more than a dozen public health organizations sued the Trump administration, arguing that it was undercutting access to health services, including birth control, by withholding Title X funding. And then when you take into effect things like Medicaid cuts, those things would leave millions of people without access to health coverage, which obviously also threatens to limit things like contraceptives and birth control. And so all of this stuff is not happening in a vacuum.

And I think that that's what scholars are sort of worried about, right? This one-to punch of this growing media climate that spreads fear, lies, and misinformation about birth control also combine with these policy decisions. that restrict birth control. The New York Times spoke to Amanda Stevenson, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, who said those two processes, stigmatization and legal restrictions are mutually reinforcing.

And I guess I would say the piece of this that I find the most interesting to me and the most telling is just sort of the way that social media has reinforced being critical or skeptical or not on birth control as a kind of idea. And here's how Dr. Jennifer Pena, the chief medical officer for the reproductive telehealth platform, Wisp, she says that she sees dozens of patients each year who come to her with worries rooted in misinformation. They're asking her things like, is an IUD going to make me infertile?

If I go off first control, how long will it take me to get out of my system? How can I do this naturally with an aura ring? I want to be pure, right? Like all of these things that seem so identity-based. And she really traces that back to these online wellness influencers. She says, there's a cry for identity. Social media is becoming the algorithm for education. And once there's a trend, it becomes the norm for topics of conversation inside clinics.

And I think that's really the thing is that people are watching all of this content. And the same way that I, you know, I'm like, oh, maybe I'm somebody who should start wearing more ath leisure or maybe I'm somebody who should drink smoothies. The same way that social media. can influence me in that way. It is also influencing people to be incredibly critical and concerned about this medication. And doctors are saying, listen,

we have people coming in asking us these questions that I know are rooted in online misinformation about birth control. That word pure. That's such a red flag. I want to be pure. It's bad. And what's so funny to me is that

the piece talked to another young woman and like a black college activist who was like, listen, I worked my ass off working retail to pay for birth control when I was in high school myself because I wanted to have the freedom that birth control allowed me in my life. And I wanted to have the control that it allowed me of my life and my choices. And so she talked about how going to college now and hearing from her friends who were the same age as her who are basically saying like, oh, I don't want to be on birth control. I don't want to put that stuff in my body. And how sad it makes her that in this day and age, this way of helping us control our lives, our finances, our plans, our futures is being so stigmatized and demonized

that it makes her sad. And so she became a college activist who tables on her campus to help people get access to birth control. And she described it like this. She said, the biggest thing I see on social media is this earthy green girl lifestyle type shebang. It's like a trendy aesthetic. And I guess that is my point.

If you speak to a doctor and birth control is not for you, more power to you. But I don't think that rejecting birth control should be a trendy identity aesthetic that you get from TikTok, right? These are healthcare and medical decisions. This is a decision whether or not to take a prescription drug. That is a decision that you should be making with your doctor,

not with some rando on TikTok because you liked her green earthy girl aesthetic, right? You got a 15 second glimpse of her made up and seemingly happy in the golden hour shot. That is not truth. Yeah. And who knows what her life is really like? Who knows why she is telling you this, right? And I just think that we should really be concerned about what happens when rejecting birth control becomes this trendy identity aesthetic on TikTok.

more and more women are going to be losing control and autonomy over their bodies, their plans, their futures, their finances, and their lives without even necessarily realizing that that's what's happening, right? That the woman that the New York Times spoke to, Ashley, who was like, I wonder who I am if I'm not on birth control, a parent who had a child before her and her partner were ready to have that per her own description of the situation. And by the way, after having her child, the New York Times checked back in with her and she was like, oh, I'm on birth control now.

I said, I can't have another kid. You know? Yeah, that was that was a follow-up I really wanted to know, honestly. And are you back on? Are you good now? Yeah, I mean, like, it's tough because I really don't want to make it seem like I'm saying, everybody should be on birth control. But the same thing that we talked about with the trad wives thing,

we should not be pushing young people into giving up autonomy and giving up the things that give us choices. And even if you're not somebody who wants to or needs, needs to be on birth control, we should not be creating a climate where it's stigmatized, where somebody who does need it is going to look twice at it or I think that's unsafe for me, that's dangerous for me. If I put this in my body, I am, I might turn bisexual or I might be making myself infertile or any other kind of junk that is being amplified on social media platforms so irresponsibly right now when it comes to birth control.

Right. And again, this comes back into this bigger layer. Like, we probably need to do a playlist of all of these episodes with you because to connect these thoughts. Once again, there is a connection to the Chad Wives conversation that we've had, the misinformation about abortion from the jump, the misinformation from things like WhatsApp who tell you it's private, but it's not using things like this, as well as this conversation. Like, this is a bigger chain. This is a bigger picture in a small detail that they don't, they don't tell you that. But when you start looking at who's behind it and why this information

is coming, it is a bigger picture and it's propaganda. Yeah, I mean, these bad actors aren't wrong. We are being lied to you, just not by the people they necessarily want us to be fearful of. And I think that's exactly my point, that all of these things are related. Tech companies are tech companies and bad actors are materially benefiting from all of us being fearful and less informed about these choices that are so important for the way that we live our lives. And, you know, I, birth control, I'm at the stage of my life where it's not. a huge concern for me in general. But that's just the thing.

Birth control, it's not just about side effects or hormones or the ability to have sex. It is about those things, but it's also about autonomy, the ability to make informed decisions about our own bodies based on facts and not fear. That is something that

generations of women fought for. My own mother, my own late mother, God rest of her soul, she fought for that. And I just don't think we should just give that up because an influencer told us, to. And I think that as these algorithms get louder than actual medical experts, it is really worth asking, who is benefiting when we stop trusting our doctors and start putting our trust in influencers and podcasters instead? And so if the question is, who are you without birth control? Hopefully,

not just content for somebody else's wellness grift, right? Our wellness brand, the better question is, Who could we become when we start demanding care and content that is honest, evidence-based, and actually centered on us and our bodies and what we truly actually need? Big on the centered on us, please. Yes. Oh, absolutely. Well, a very spooky episode indeed. And as always, so many other things we could talk about.

we always love having you on. Thank you so much for coming on and elucidating these things for us as much as they can be in our wild times. Yeah, my pleasure. And yeah, if anybody, if the cryptkeeper, if you're listening, call me.

Ooh, yes. Let us know about that, Bridgett. Don't call me. Don't call me. You're like, don't call me. Annie would probably prefer to get called by the scream voice. Ghost face. Yeah. Samantha did that to me.

Yeah, I said Annie up. There was a hotline right when the movie was coming out that you could actually send a message. So I put Annie's info. She got that call. It was fun. Yes. And we played it in the episode. It scared me very, very, because you told I would never answer a number that I didn't recognize. And you sent me a text, Samantha, that was like, answer the call. You need to answer this phone call. It was a New York number too. Yeah. Like you have to, you need to answer this call. I did. And it scared me. And I loved it. So thank you. Well, I hope that you have more excellent horror movie times, Halloween times. And we're looking forward to talking to you again. But in the meantime, Bridget, where can the good listeners find you? Well, you can find me on Instagram at Bridget Marie in D.C. You can find me on TikTok at Bridget Marie in D.C. on YouTube at There are no girls on the internet. And you can listen to my podcast. There are no girls on the internet. If you like spooky conversations about our. social media landscape. Yeah, sure.

I mean, honestly, yes. Well, go do that, listeners, if you haven't already. If you would like to email us you can or email us, hello at Stuff Whenever Told You, we're also on blue sky at Mom's Stuff Podcasts. Or on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff I Never Told You. We're also on YouTube. We have new merchandise at Compe Hero, and we have a book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to our super producer, Christina, executive producer, my inter contributor, Joey.

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Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was fine. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming to him. He's like, you know I love it.

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