The colourful life of the birth control pill

From practical to beautiful to cost-optimised

MUVS’ pill collection is probably the largest in the world. Anyone who casts an eye over it will spot that, in addition to providing guidance on correct and regular use, the designs have other goals: camouflage, appreciation, idealisation and perhaps also a dash of the pure joy of creativity. These are not gimmicks but meaningful measures to signal value and acceptance to the consumer, to encourage regular use, and to eliminate any misunderstandings. 

The first birth control pills came onto the market loose in brown glass bottles. Women were thus constantly asking themselves – or were pestered by their partners: “Have I/you already taken my/your pill today?”

To spare himself and his wife the never-ending questions, D. P. Wagner from Illinois drew a calendar on a piece of paper and placed a pill in each box. For five days, his idea worked terrifically, but then a breeze blew his construction onto the floor. Wagner was a tinkerer, and it was no coincidence that he worked as a production engineer for a tool company. So, he set out to develop a new system. His dispenser came onto the market under the name Dialpak and made it easier to take the pill regularly and correctly. 

This functional improvement freed the pill from its relegation to the home environment. It could now be carried in a woman’s handbag, but was also exposed there to unauthorised eyes. To prevent this, John Rock, co-developer of the pill and professor of gynaecology at Harvard Medical School, suggested hiding the rotatable disc in an innocent-looking powder compact. 

Subsequently, a whole host of small works of art came onto the market – both in terms of their chemistry and their design. Many packs from the 1970s are a real treat for the eyes! Elegant, tasteful and lovingly designed, extravagantly produced, and modelled on premium powder compacts, they are simply little treasures. 

The visual design of the packaging takes cultural habits and expectations into account: the colours and graphics in Central Europe are much more restrained than those used in countries in Asia and South America. 

Today, the pill has long ceased to be the object of female aspirations, a banner of emancipation, and a symbol of an autonomous life. Even very young girls probably no longer show off their pills proudly among their circle of female friends, as a sign that they are now grown up. 

It is also of no use in this regard that modern pharmaceutical marketing wants to turn the pill into a best friend – at least in terms of product names. The packaging of modern pills, by contrast, signals sheer seriousness: nothing playful or even emotional, due to the importance of drug safety, on the one hand, and also cost optimisation in production. 

The next chapter: to bleed or not to bleed?

Today, the pill is the most widely used preparation, with an estimated 60 to 80 million regular users worldwide, though the numbers have declined slightly in the last 15 years.

A regular monthly bleed, as imitated by the pill, is not actually necessary for the contraceptive effect but was introduced for strategic reasons. It was intended to make the idea of the ‘hormonal imitation of nature’ clear and to ensure the societal acceptance of contraception by means of a pill. This strategy proved successful, and the pill won through despite massive resistance. However, this fiction is maintained even today – more than 60 years later – that after three weeks of the pill, a week’s break is needed for menstruation. This is medically incorrect, because those who take the pill do not have a monthly cycle and consequently do no menstruate. Many women suffer as a result of this false monthly bleed and have all sorts complaints, such as pain, but also iron deficiency, which is widespread. What’s more, this week-long bleed greatly reduces the pill’s otherwise almost 100 percent effectiveness, which can lead to contraceptive failures.

The so-called extended-cycle pill provides a remedy: with this new 3-month pill or the continuous use of a conventional combination pill, there is no 7-day break after 21 days – as there is in the “normal” pill regimen, when bleeding then occurs. Rather, the pill continues to be taken. There is therefore no drop in hormone levels, and thus no withdrawal bleeding. Just as with use of the “normal” pill, extended-cycle pills have no effect on later fertility. Since the body has no memory when it comes to fertility, the use or non-use of contraception in the past has no effect on the future.