The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Pill Could Do You Wrong In Many Ways

If the blood clots and stroke risks don’t scare you off the pill, maybe this will: Women taking oral contraceptives are less attractive to the opposite sex and less likely to pick a good mate, according to a roundup of studies on the pill, published in this month's Trends in Ecology and Evolution, that Sarah Kliff at Newsweek reported on today.

When a woman is ovulating, her hormonal fluctuations affect her “facial appearance, her vocal pitch, even body odor,” Kliff writes. “And during ovulation, those changes increase a woman's attractiveness because they indicate fertility.” Hardly as dramatic as the potential side effect that terrified many of my friends when we started going on the pill: rapid weight gain. But apparently men—who, so the legend goes, don’t even notice a new outfit or restyled hair (or is that just my dad?)—pick up on these shifts, as shown in a study in the roundup that found that lap dancers make higher tips when they’re ovulating ... (Read more in DoubleX.)