There’s been an posted on TikTok and Instagram recently discussing the alleged dangers of birth control. Content creators have shared concerns about the pill’s side-effects ranging from weight gain to low libido and fluctuating moods. Other claims are misleading because they associated with contraception, cancer and infertility.
Author
Stephanie Alice Baker
Senior Lecturer in Sociology, City, University of London
Many of these posts and videos are created by wellness influencers who foster the impression of authenticity by sharing their personal lives with their followers. This presents them as trustworthy, despite lacking medical qualifications, making it difficult for people to discern what to believe and who to trust.
The first emerged in the US in the 1970s as an alternative to the standard medical treatment model. Rather than framing health as the absence of disease, pioneers of the wellness movement conceived of wellness as a lifestyle driven towards the pursuit of optimal health and vitality.
The movement was inspired by , a book published in 1961 by statistician and medical doctor Halbert L. Dunn. Dunn believed wellness involved a holistic approach to health, encompassing the mind, body and spirit to maximise a person’s potential.
The ethos and alternative lifestyle practices associated with the wellness movement resonated with . It also coalesced with – such as and .
The women’s movement championed a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, critiquing what they perceived to be a in post-war America. Activists fought for a woman’s right to be involved in decisions about her health and the treatments she received.
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Women’s rights activists also fought for reproductive rights, including the right of unmarried women to .
But today’s online backlash to birth control occurs in a context where women’s reproductive rights have been curtailed. If natural contraceptive methods result in an unwanted pregnancy, some women no longer have the right to choose. This raises questions about how the pill has been re-framed from a source of liberation to harmful by some female wellness influencers.
The role of social media
Social media has changed how we connect and communicate online. It’s also lowered the barrier to achieving fame, enabling content creators to and large followings by sharing their experiences and lifestyle advice.
Unlike the doctor-patient relationship, which is characterised by , influencers establish trust and intimacy by fostering the with their followers. This typically involves providing backstage access to their personal lives and being vulnerable with their audience by sharing personal failures and triumphs.
There’s a tendency to . This is why many women may consult friends and relatives for . People trust influencers because they appear – independent from the media and the political and commercial interests associated with traditional experts and authority figures.
The inclination to look beyond institutional expertise for health information is not new. Scientific knowledge has always been constructed through a combination of expert and non-expert voices. What has changed is that , with social media enabling people to create and broadcast content publicly on these sites – regardless of whether they’re an expert or not. In some cases, disinformation is being .
Where the wellness movement was once primarily associated with liberal ideologies, many journalists and researchers have recently observed an intersection between wellness discussions and . This shift was , when wellness became a gateway to .
Despite this convergence, the backlash against contraception cannot be reduced solely to politics. While some conservative influencers encourage (such as timing sex to menstrual cycles) instead of synthetic hormonal contraception, many influencers have more generic concerns about the of corporations and pharmaceuticals companies that have persisted for decades.
These concerns often manifest in critiques of experts and elites, who they see as compromised by money and power.
Instead, wellness influencers commonly prioritise what my colleague and I previously termed – knowledge derived from intuition and experience rather than professionals. This often manifests in the promotion of lifestyles depicted as natural, ancestral or primal. The experts and doctors these influencers trust tend to be those .
Many wellness influencers today share similar concerns as the about male doctors telling women what to do with their bodies. They want to be heard, believed and gain control over their body. But one of the striking differences between the women’s movement and the female entrepreneurs championing women’s health online, is that the advice influencers share is often monetised. Most influencers appear to be less interested in political change and more interested in promoting a specific lifestyle, product or service.
Why this matters
In the late 20th century, the wellness movement gave way to . Wellness became a commodity.
Social media has further commodified wellness, with influencers using wellness to . The financial gains that can be made from sowing distrust and establishing oneself as a credible alternative make women’s wellness a .
Influencers typically , making their content difficult to regulate as they often user disclaimers to legally protect themselves. Rather than diminish their authority, these anecdotes are central to it – with influencers trading on their apparent ordinariness.
Those critical of contraception could be motivated by a variety of different factors and experiences and it would be a mistake to reduce all criticisms to misinformation. But who we trust influences what we believe. If the backlash to contraception highlights anything, it’s that misinformation is more about trust, identity and relationships than information.
Stephanie Alice Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
