Birth Control May Weaken Sense of Smell, Lead You to Love Stinky Loser

Let me start this off by saying that the birth control pill RULES. Anyone who does not like birth control is probably either a miserable enemy of uteri everywhere, or a fish whose hormone levels are being negatively effected by birth-control-filled pee.

One time someone told me they were worried that my birth control was making act erratically and then my gynecologist called her a bitch — which is maybe not the most feminist of responses, but, whatever, the point is that birth control rules. Furthermore, myths about women behaving irrationally because of something womb-related are so 1840. Anyways, while we are on the subject of overreacting to supposed birth control side effects: according to Refinery 29,

A University of Catania study found that women who did not take the pill had the most sensitive sense of smell around the time of ovulation. But, after just three months of going on the pill, women showed no increased sense of smell at the time they were most fertile.

If, like me, your morning commute involves riding inside of a rusty garbage-train through the steamy bowels of a filth-infested hellscape, only to emerge onto a street redolent with the sickly aroma of an old hot dog that someone very ill urinated on, this might come as good news. Well, sorry, it’s not:

[W]hen we think about how smell is tied in with sexual desire, the effects are alarming. Jill Blakeway, a renowned New York-based acupuncturist and author of Sex Again: Recharging Your Libido, says that this could potentially lead us to pick the wrong mate. Indeed, another study by the University of New Mexico showed that when women were on the pill and most fertile, they showed no particular preference of the smell of men with symmetrical features vs. asymmetrical features, while those not on the pill clearly chose the scent of men with symmetrical features.

Tremble in fear, fellow womyn! You might be unwittingly beguiled by the stink of an asymmetrical man if you ingest a birth control pill. Your friends may discover you, disoriented, gyrating your Loestrin-filled body up against a gargoyle at the end of your neighbor’s driveway.

While I understand that the science of attraction is complicated, and that there’s a lot about it we have yet to fully comprehend, it’s a slightly alarmist stance to argue that taking birth control leads to diminished sense of smell during peak fertility leads to possibly picking the wrong mate FOR LIFE (alarming!). I would rather not be pregnant when I don’t want to be pregnant than be able to sniff my mates for optimum compatibility with me; however, maybe I’m just saying that because I have yet to deduce that my mate actually has a face like the Phantom of the Opera due to the obfuscating haze of my birth control goggles.

“Birth Control Pills May Weaken Your Sense of Smell” [The Frisky]
Image via Getty.