NEED TO KNOW
It’s a small pink pill that can help women regain control of their sexual health. So why is it controversial?
That’s the question explored in the new documentary, The Pink Pill: Sex, Drugs and Who Has Control. The documentary — helmed by acclaimed director Aisling Chin-Yee (No Ordinary Man, Rest of Us, Plan B) — explores the inherent gender bias in women’s health through stories of real women who restored their libido by using a little pink pill, Addyi.
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Addyi is an FDA-approved, non-hormonal prescription medication that’s been mistakenly called “female Viagra.” But unlike that little blue pill, Addyi works in the brain, not the body — and instead of taking it before sexual activity, it’s meant to be taken daily to increase sexual desire in perimenopausal and menopausal women.
“I feel like a new woman on this drug,” one woman who took the pill shares in the documentary’s trailer.
But the road to approval wasn’t easy. It took entrepreneur Cindy Eckert, founder of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures the drug, 10 years to get the green light. It was rejected by the Food and Drug Administration twice — and when it was approved, it had a black box warning, which has since been removed.
The film examines the systemic bias against women’s care, including concerns that women would “not make good choices” on the medication. There haven’t been, at least publicly, similar concerns about medications for male erectile dysfunction.
“How do you take on the government for women’s sexual pleasure?” Eckert says in the trailer. “You lean right into it and say, ‘This is the conversation we’re going to have.’ ”
The Pink Pill: Sex, Drugs and Who Has Control is now streaming through DOCNYC.
