Occasionally, despite my generally laissez-faire, non-judgmental attitude towards sex, there are a few things that perturb me. Rape, of course. Slut shaming. Abstinence-only sex education. And ignorance about contraception. One of the most disturbing manifestations of this that I’ve encountered are ladies who take the pill and have absolutely no idea what they’re putting into their bodies and how it works. Maybe it’s because the pill has become so normalized and routine, like popping Advil, so the complexity of it isn’t apparent, but I definitely feel that once you start playing with the hormones in your body, you need to know what’s up.

1. The pill tries to keep you free of pregnancy in four different ways.

It tries to stop an egg from leaving your ovary. Then, it makes your cervix produce more mucus so neither an egg or sperm can stick. The hormones also prevent the lining of your uterus (or potential womb) from getting thick enough for a fertilized egg to be viable. Finally, the pill manipulates the movement in your Fallopian tubes to prevent an egg from meeting a sperm in the first place. So, it’s a pretty complicated process, and every once in awhile, the pill fails to execute it properly, which is why most of us know, or know of, someone who has gotten pregnant while on the pill.

2. It loses effectiveness if you don’t take it at the same time every day.

One of the reasons the Pill is so popular is because it doesn’t affect your fertility in the long run, which means that if you’re not diligent about taking your pill daily, it does start losing its pregnancy protection magic. So pick a time that is most convenient for you, set an alarm on your cell, and pop it on the regular. If you do miss a pill, here are the guidelines for how to get back on track.

3. Your side effects aren’t going to be the same as your friend’s side effects.

Everyone’s body reacts differently to changes in the hormonal structure. Your skin may clear up while your friend’s looks like she just went back in time to 7th grade, or you may experience consistent spotting while someone else’s periods become non-existent. It’s perfectly normal to have to go through multiple pills to find one that best suits your body and your needs.

4. The pill does not protect against STDs. 

I would never deny that the pill has been a major game changer for women, especially in the way that we are able to have agency over our reproductive choices, and we don’t have to rely on men using condoms in order to stay baby-free. However, if you are getting it in with someone new, and you have no idea what their STD status is, please use a condom (correctly).

5. Your birth control shouldn’t make you miserable. 

Whether your appetite has been out of control and you’ve been gaining a bunch of weight, or your cramps are unbearable, or you’re spotting a lot in between periods, you don’t have to endure it. If your body hasn’t adjusted after 3 months, it’s time to look into a different option. Whether it’s another pill or an IUD or a Nuvaring, your contraception should not make your daily life uncomfortable at all.

[Image via Calek/Shutterstock]

Louis Vuitton has always been the signifier of luxury lifestyle: suitcases, satchels and…contraception? Pictures of a monogrammed condom have been spreading faster than an STI after Halloween, and it’s said to sell for a whopping $68. Because when wrapping it up in such a fashion, the sex will definitely be better than when using the free condoms given out on campus, right?! Talk about getting some serious bang for your buck.

Oh, and by the way, it’s also supposed to be a gift that gives back, since a portion of the proceeds are said to benefit amfAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Sure, it costs a pretty penny, but can you really put a price on sex that could potentially save lives?!?

This just sounds way too good/ridiculous/hilarious to be true…

Technically, a Louis Vuitton condom exists, as in there are condoms with the Louis Vuitton monogram being made. But according to the “official” website LouisVuittonCondom.com (and contrary to what many other blogs are reporting), the branded contraception isn’t actually from the luxury brand at all. In fact, the product was “designed” by Georgia Republic architect Irakli Kiziria, a man just trying to make a buck off of another man’s money, really. Oh, and possibly raise some money for amfAR too.

From what I can tell, the entire purpose of fake luxury items is to show them off to others and pretend that you really do live enough of the high life to carry a couple thousand on your forearm like it’s nothing at all. So why would something as private as a condom ever be enticing to produce as an imitation? Actually, it’s a fake version of an item that doesn’t actually exist. And it’s disposable after a single use…and who knows how safe that single use actually is anyway, since it’s coming from an architect instead of a reputable brand.

Thank goodness this isn’t actually a condom produced by Louis Vuitton. And even if the fashion house did go into luxury contraception, I highly doubt that monogrammed ridges would be any more enjoyable.

Ashley is a UC San Diego grad who is holding on way too tightly to a potential career in magazines and goes to Vegas all too often. She’s fascinated with celebrities and strawberry beer and doubles as a pathological texter/emailer/blogger. Feed the addiction with tweets @cashleelee. Thanks in advance.

A few months ago, an old friend randomly texted me. We’d known each other for about eight or nine years – she was a former next door neighbor. People grow apart over time, but we’d still send each other the obligatory “are you still alive?” text every now and then. This go around, the conversation got a little serious.

We got on the topic of love…her love life and my lack thereof. She had a boyfriend that she’d been on and off with for a few years. The only “on and off” I had was my television.

“I’m having a baby girl in July,” she texted as the conversation waned.

I was mind blown. This girl who I basically grew up with was having a girl of her own?!

When I applied for my internship at The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy in D.C., I had my old friend in mind. I could’ve sent applications to the hundreds of newspapers and magazines in the DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) area, but I wanted to do something that truly made a difference. Starbucks runs and fact checking could wait. Luckily, I’m working with Bedsider.org, a new online birth control support network that is informative, fun, and edgy enough to make a real difference. When I got the internship, I promised myself that I’d try to relay the Campaign’s message of prevention to my friends back home. Roughly 75 percent of my graduating class is married or they have a child. Isn’t that crazy?!

One of Bedsider’s sayings is “babies are great…when you’re ready for them.” I totally agree. My friend, as fabulous of a mother as she may be, was definitely not ready for a baby. We used to dream out loud about what we’d be when we grow up. I wanted to write and she wanted to act. I’m fortunate to be living my dream and now my friend has to put hers on hold.

I love Bedsider because of its honesty. Let’s get real…mostly everyone in our demographic is having sex or something similar to it. We young guys and girls can be pretty hard headed…no one really picks up (or reads) those sex pamphlets at the doctor anymore. Bedsider features “Real Stories” from people our age who tell us about their contraceptive preferences. There’s a nifty Method Explorer with a photo and detailed description of each birth control method, and you can filter the methods by categories like “most effective” and “do me now.” How cool is that?

Every college or high school may not be one of the top institutions for sex ed. On my campus, for example, there’s only the occasional awareness program, or my personal favorite — the condom bowl at the front desk in dormitories. Bedsider’s a great alternative if Sex Ed 101 isn’t in your course catalog and a great supplement even if it is. I really like the fact that the site is so visible in the realm of social media – I can check out their Twitter feed, receive a birth control or doctor’s appointment reminder on my Blackberry, and read Bedsider’s tumblr during my lunch break. I update blog posts and find images for Flickr Friday almost every day.

It’s a little too late for me to send my friend a link to Bedsider.org. But the recent launch is timely enough for you to send it to your friends and family!

But this time, by the luck of the draw, I happened to get a check-up from someone that (gasp!) actually knew what they were talking about. I’m not saying you should listen to this doctor (nurse practitioner, if you want to get technical) instead of your own, but these are a few little known facts I picked up that I thought I would share.

Beware, as these tidbits may scare you away from sex for life (or at least for the night).

1. In order for your birth control to be 99.7% effective, you must take it every day within 30 minutes of the same time.
Apparently, the hormones that make you temporarily infertile only work for 24 straight hours. According to Susan (the nurse practitioner), you should be okay if you miss the time by 1 to 2 hours. If you miss more than that, however, you should use condoms for at least a week.

2. If you don’t take birth control at the same time every day, the effectiveness can be as low as 92%.
For all of you that have taken statistics, that means you have an 8% chance of getting preggers. Let me say that clearer: the chance of you having a small person come out of you in 9 months is 26 times higher if you don’t take your b.c. regularly. Noooo, thank you. (For more important facts about your pill, click here.)

3. Some STDs, especially HIV, have an incubation period of up to 6 months.
That means that even if you are negative for the disease today, you won’t be in the clear until you have another negative test 6 months from now. And that only applies if you haven’t engaged in any high-risk sexual activity. In short, make him wrap it up.

4. You can get HIV easier from oral-anal contact aka “rimming” (the grossest sex slang ever) than from any other form of oral sex.
This one was in a Safe Sex pamphlet that Susan so generously gave me. Not that I’m recommending that everybody run and try this one out, but just use that fact to put things into perspective. Or as a very handy excuse to say no if/when your partner ever puts in such a request.

5. Alcohol and drugs can weaken your immune system, making you more susceptible to infection.
Yes kids, that includes STDs and other icky things. I can also testify that being drunk makes having sex, especially enjoyable sex, just that much more difficult to maneuver. What’s more, according to my lovely pamphlet, alcohol and drugs can also impair your judgment and make you do things you may regret in the morning. Who knew?

This week, under the category of “news that made me say WTF!” was this little story about students at Georgetown University taping their mouths and chaining themselves to a statue in front of the school in protest of the fact the Georgetown doesn’t provide or help to provide contraceptive options like condoms to it’s students. The school, a private Catholic university stands by the religious policies of the Catholic church under which it was founded and refuses to provide any contraception that prevents the creation of life. Let the debate begin!

OK, let’s go ahead and get this out before the NYC-liberal-arts-student part of me literally explodes – SERIOUSLY! Are you freakin’ kidding me?! Georgetown, a major university, which does not require it’s students to follow Catholic doctrine, is still, in this day and age, refusing to hand out condoms!? Are you gonna provide daycare, Georgetown?

Ah, I feel better now.

But honestly, there are a lot of good reasons why Georgetown should step up and help with the sexual health of it’s students. To begin with, Georgetown is located in Washington D.C. where officials have declared a citywide HIV/AIDS epidemic. That means that, completely outside of the pregnancy prevention argument, Georgetown is refusing to help it’s students protect themselves from devastating, life-changing illness. And yes, students at GU could just go around the corner to the drugstore and buy their own condoms, but as many many schools have found out, it’s a lot harder to get students to do that (when you’re this close to getting it on in your dorm, that CVS might as well be China).

And this isn’t just a Georgetown issue, students at religious universities all over the country encounter these same things -  last year, a student at Stonehill College collected free condoms from family-planning clinics and distributed them at school. Stonehill’s administration found out and went around confiscating them from would-be sexy-timers.

And yet, though it goes against all of my personal sexual beliefs, I do have to defend Georgetown’s choices too. It is a private, religious school. They don’t make any qualms about their beliefs or that the school itself upholds those ideas – if people choose to go there anyway, then they have to accept that the school won’t violate it’s principles for them. The university, all private religious schools, and the students there who do follow those doctrines have a right to their beliefs and to force them to do otherwise would be wrong.  To fund and staff a school organization aimed at providing contraception would cost money, and by that virtue, take money away from it’s staff and students. While some of those students would benefit from that organization, there are also those who would not want to use them and isn’t it unfair then that their tuition money would be spent on something they can’t use – essentially wasting it for them? If students choose to have sex, shouldn’t they at least be adult enough to remember to make a drugstore run before the big date?

OK, so it’s thoughts and opinions time! Should religious universities like Georgetown buck up and get with the times? Should they at least be obligated to give their students options? Or should the students just accept that there are certain things that go along with the schools they’ve picked and make their own arrangements?

Let’s hear it!

I have always had health insurance and never really thought about what the birth control options were without it. That made my birth control a whole $8 a month or so. But that’s neither here nor there. I don’t have health insurance anymore and neither do many college girls in need of birth control.

The laws have changed since the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which alters how drug makers are permitted to calculate rebates related to Medicaid. Somehow or another, this act twisted itself around to make it expensive for companies to offer schools discounts on birth control. Lame. So instead of paying $3-$10 a pack, thanks to discounts, college students are now being forced to pay $30-$50 a pack instead. Even for the cases when insurance would cover the difference, what about the girls who don’t want to involve their parents’ insurance with their birth control?

A female college student should be able to obtain reasonably priced birth control in this country without the assistance of health insurance.

Of course there are numbers of conservative folks out there who would argue that with sex comes the responsibility of motherhood, but if I may beg to differ, that is an opinion. The problems associated with unplanned pregnancy, on the other hand, are hard facts.

Who is really driving the drug companies to make specific decisions like this? Paying this much money for birth control, especially during a recession, is what I would qualify as unreasonable. Were these packs of cigarettes, not packs of helpful pills, then I’d understand. But birth control should be at the disposal of all sexually active young women in our country not yet prepared to mother.

Birth control doesn’t create a problem–it prevents one. Not offering birth control at a reasonable rate might push girls to stop using it, leaving this country with the burden of paying to care for more unwanted children.

Young women should not be punished for trying to make responsible choices and we must get up and remind the lawmakers, drug companies and universities of this fact. There is no reason men should be able to get Viagra for $8 a bottle, but women must spend 5 times that much on birth control.

Have you had this problem on your campus? How much does your birth control cost?

[Photo from Abcnews.net]

But this time, by the luck of the draw, I happened to get a check-up from someone that (gasp!) actually knew what they were talking about. Now I’m not saying you should listen to this doctor (nurse practitioner if you want to get technical) instead of your own, but these are a few little known facts I picked up that I thought I would share. Beware, as these tidbits may scare you away from sex for life (or at least for the night).

1. In order for your birth control to be 99.7% effective, you must take it every day within 30 minutes of the same time.

Apparently, the hormones that make you temporarily infertile only work for 24 straight hours. According to Susan (the nurse practitioner), you should be okay if you miss the time by 1 to 2 hours. If you miss more than that, however, you should use condoms for at least a week.

2. If you don’t take birth control at the same time every day, the effectiveness can be as low as 92%.

For all of you that have taken statistics, that means you have an 8% chance of getting preggers. Let me say that clearer: the chance of you having a small person come out of you in 9 months is 26 times higher if you don’t take your b.c. regularly. Noooo thank you.

3. Some STDs, especially HIV, have an incubation period of up to 6 months.

That means that even if you are negative for the disease today, you won’t be in the clear until you have another negative test 6 months from now. And that only applies if you haven’t engaged in any high-risk sexual activity. In short, make him wrap it up.

4. You can get HIV easier from oral-anal contact aka “rimming” (the grossest sex slang ever) than from any other form of oral sex.

This one was in a Safe Sex pamphlet that Susan so generously gave me. Not that I’m recommending that everybody run and try this one out, but just use that fact to put things into perspective.

5. Alcohol and drugs can weaken your immune system, making you more susceptible to infection.

Yes kids, that includes STDs and other icky things. I can also testify that being drunk makes having sex, especially enjoyable sex, just that much more difficult to maneuver. What’s more, according to my lovely pamphlet, alcohol and drugs can also impair your judgment and make you do things you may regret in the morning. Who knew?

We’re not sure this commercial will convince guys that wearing a condom will still “feel the same,” or that Durex is better than Trojan. In fact, the only thing this commercial really does is give our men something else to do with our contraception while we are straightening our hair.

But it’s still funny as hell.

I have been addicted to Diet Coke for years. I used to start off with a jumbo fountain D.C. on my way to class at 10 AM, followed by another one at lunch and yet another (mixed with rum) for an evening snack. There was nothing on this planet that could come between me and my beloved Diet Coke. In fact, I wasn’t sure there was any way I could love it any more.

But, dear readers, there is: it seems that not only is Diet Coke the tastiest, most delectable treat on this planet….

It is also an effective spermicide!

Oh yeah! You heard me. That stuff you have been drinking by the gallon also happens to be strong enough to kill those little impregnators. Could there be a more perfect beverage? I think not.

Sure, this fact may worry some people (“blah blah how can I put something in my body that is strong enough to kill sperm blah blah blah?), but I couldn’t be happier! Just think of the possibilities:

No need for condoms or birth control when you have a 20 ouncer in the fridge! (Note: not quite sure how one would go about using that 20 ouncer as a contraceptive….) Or better yet, Coca Cola condoms! They taste like Diet Coke (which will make me much more happy to get near ‘em) and have the same effectiveness at preventing pregnancy as a can of D.C.!

This changes everything.

A: Ladies, listen up: Plan B is NOT the abortion pill. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

So what is it if it’s not the abortion pill? Basically, Plan B what it sounds like — it’s your backup plan, meant to be taken up to 72 hours after unprotected sex or contraceptive failure, to prevent pregnancy. In fact, Plan B contains levonorgestrel, an ingredient found in many regular birth control pills — but in a higher dose and in two pills, taken 12 hours apart. Again, Plan B only prevents pregnancy; it doesn’t terminate an existing one, like the abortion pill would.

That being said, yes, stock up! Plan B is now available at pharmacies without a prescription if you’re 18 or older. Whether you’re boinking every hour on the hour or in a dry spell, it will give you some peace of mind to know you have a “sh*t happens” plan. My friend recently needed it, and although she was able to get it within a few hours, not everyone is so lucky. Plan B reduces the chance of pregnancy by up to 89%, but it’s more effective when taken sooner rather than later.

Get it now, on your next tampon run, and you won’t have to deal with any what ifs down the road. You may never need it, but if you do, whether it’s because of a broken (or forgotten) condom, or a sexual assault, the last thing you need to be doing is freaking out and driving at 3AM in search of an open pharmacy. If you’re shy about asking for it, you can print out a request card for it on www.go2planb.com and just hand that to the pharmacist. Don’t worry, you won’t be the first to do it.

Of course, once you have it, it shouldn’t be your primary method of birth control. It’s up to 89% effective, so if you use it irresponsibly, you’ll soon become part of the other 11%. Have safe sex, have extra condoms on hand (enough for you and a friend!), and consider using a birth control pill if you’re having sex regularly.

For more information on how to use Plan B, head to www.go2planb.com.