Women’s bodies and identities are often defined by normative conceptions of the female physical form and function. If a girl gets her period she is now a “real” woman. However, if she does not get her period until she is older or does not get regular periods, her body is not functioning as it normally should and something must be wrong with her. She is an anomaly, she is not natural. If a woman produces too much body or facial hair she is manly and not feminine enough to be a proper woman or suitable partner. These “abnormalities” are inherently “‘women’s problems” that reflect their womanhood and feminity due to the linkage of “female disorders to female sex hormones” as explained by healthcare professor Nelly Oudshoorn in “The Birth of Sex Hormones”. When a woman's body is not functioning “correctly” something must be wrong with her hormones. The issue is then tied to her hormonal, and thus female, body. As result, her bodily functions become an indicator of her womanhood and if she is functioning as women should. Sociologist Ruha Benjamin explains in “Catching Our Breath: Critical Race STS and the Carceral Imagination how this practice of using women’s bodies and bodily functions to define them as normal or abnormal women “‘[treats] the body as evidence that trumps individuals’ accounts of who they are and whether and where they belong.” (2) Regardless of “who they are” and how they identify themselves, their bodily functions and physical form construe their womanhood and if they are a “normal” woman or not. 

Through giving women control over their own bodies, birth control allows women to naturally regulate their bodies back to how they should operate, how normal female bodies operate. Birth control puts women in charge of their own bodies, not only in terms of pregnancy but also in bodily function. Many women use birth control to restore women’s bodies to a state of naturalness, a state of normality. In “Potency in all the Right Places”, sociologists Laura Mamo and Jennifer Fishman discuss how “the normative assumption is the way in which we have come to see nature as within our realm of control: anything else is considered ‘unnatural.’” (3) As birth control repositions women’s bodies under the realm of their control, it becomes a natural part of women’s lives.  More so, this control allows women to manipulate their body back to its normal and natural state. For example, for women with PCOS birth control is the solution. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal disorder that affects women’s fertility, stops their periods or makes them irregular, causes excess acne and body and facial hair, and raises their risk of other diseases as explained by writer and editor Annamarya Scaccia. (4) Due to these symptoms, women with PCOS are seen as abnormal because their bodies do not function how society believes female bodies should, how society believes female bodies naturally function. (5) Birth control assists women with PCOS to help them ovulate, have regular and lighter periods, reduce cramping, have clearer skin, lower risks for certain health issues, and reduce extra hair growth. Hence, birth control allows women with PCOS to operate naturally through reshaping their bodies to function as “regular” women’s bodies do. 

In enabling women to manipulate their bodies to be considered normal and natural female forms, birth control pills restore their body-mind harmony. Because women's bodies, womanhood, and identities are so reliant on their physical form and function, birth control also realigns women’s mind-body harmony. As explained above, the birth control pill turns women’s bodies to function as they should. Thus, enabling their bodies to operate how female bodies need to function to be “real” and “proper” women to match their female minds. By just taking one little pill a day women can be “normal” women once more just like the girl pictured in our ad. Your body will function just like nature intended, just like you want it to function. It’s a fact.