About Holly
Holly is the author of the cult hit ‘Sweetening the Pill: Or How We Got Hooked On Hormonal Birth Control.’ The book was released in 2013 and has since become an underground phenomenon.
She is a producer on a feature documentary inspired by ‘Sweetening the Pill.’ The film is directed by Abby Epstein and executive produced by Ricki Lake (the team behind the paradigm-shifting ‘The Business of Being Born’). ‘The Business of Birth Control’ is available now.
You may know Holly from her Guardian Op-Ed on the pill and mental health side effects, which was ranked as the most-read comment piece of 2016. The story went viral, became a Twitter Moment, and as a result she was featured by the Washington Post and interviewed for NPR (to name just a couple).
Vice has named Holly “the poster girl for a movement of women abandoning the pill in favor of contraceptives that don’t wreak havoc on their body and mind.”
Holly’s work has featured in both American and British Vogue; she has collaborated on an article about the pro-period revolution with Alanis Morissette, and produced a piece on male birth control options with Mayim Bialik.
Holly is a frequent speaker and has, notably, presented at SXSW and CES. She also leads workshops for women choosing to go off hormonal birth control in Los Angeles and around the US.
In 2015 Holly pivoted to marketing and communications consulting for the growing femtech for fertility and female wellness spheres. Holly has supported the success of a range of projects including expert’s first books and hardware start-ups. She has spent over a decade researching, connecting, and working in the circles of reproductive health, body literacy, and birth control alternatives. In that time, Holly has become a sought-after expert on these topics, providing insight, guidance, and trend forecasting to a range of individuals, companies, and brand research groups.
In the more distant past, Holly has worked with Film4 as a movie reviewer, as an interviewer for TV show MovieRush, and as a reporter for a feature news agency (her feature on a rescued pup with prosthetic paws was her first viral story).
Holly is a member of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.
About Sweetening The Pill
The book ‘Sweetening the Pill’ is a pioneer of the perspective shift that brought about the growing movement of women choosing body literacy over hormonal birth control. Ahead of its time, the book pointed to the early rumblings of women’s dissatisfaction with their contraceptive choices.
The release of ‘Sweetening the Pill’ was met with controversy (even provoking a petition to have the book banned) and yet, over 4 years on, Holly has seen her outlook and ideas embraced in the mainstream and echoed in current conversations, including those on women’s reproductive health issues, the problem of healthcare gaslighting, sexism in medicine, and male responsibility for pregnancy prevention.
In recent years, Holly’s work has been bolstered by largescale, significant studies on the link between hormonal birth control and depression, suicide risk, and breast cancer.
‘Sweetening the Pill’ was optioned by executive producer Ricki Lake in 2014 who saw it as the perfect follow-up to ‘The Business of Being Born.’ The Kickstarter for the feature documentary raised $120,000 ($20,000 over the goal) from a remarkable 1,750 backers. During this campaign Holly assisted director Abby Epstein on the production of short documentary “Could some birth control methods kill you?” With prescience, the Kickstarter asked if the future of birth control could be in fertility awareness-based femtech, several years before the FDA announced its approval of the first “digital method of birth control.”
‘Sweetening the Pill began as a Blog with the subtitle ‘Who am I when I’m not on the Pill?’ Over a few years, Holly detailed her experience of going off the pill after 10 years as a series of blog posts. She also shared her research (including 100s of interviews) on the medical sociology and political context of hormonal birth control.
