By Riley Dauber
Lifestyle Editor
While scrolling on TikTok, junior Caroline Drupka came across a video by Dr. Jennifer Lincoln ’03, an OBGYN who provides accurate and educational reproductive and menstrual information to viewers.
“I follow her [on] TikTok, and I remember looking at her website and realized that she was an alum, and I was like, ‘That is crazy. I wish I could bring her here,’” Drupka said.
Fortunately, Drupka, along with junior Andrea Norman, are the co-presidents of HOSA, the pre-health club on campus that plans educational events for students. The group worked with the Career Center to invite Dr. Lincoln to campus for a talk titled “Let’s talk about what they never taught you in high school.”
On Tuesday, March 26, in Litrenta Lecture Hall, students hoped to hear from Dr. Lincoln and fill in the gaps from their high school health classes.
“I love that everybody [is here]…it’s not just a bunch of girls. It’s like dudes — appropriately in the last row, safe,” Dr. Lincoln said.
Drupka introduced Dr. Lincoln before the talk began at 6 p.m., informing students that she graduated from Washington College in 2003 and is currently a practicing OBGYN in Portland, Ore. According to her website, Dr. Lincoln is specifically an OB hospitalist who helps pregnant and post-partum women. She is also a lactation consultant, an author — she recently published a book titled “Let’s Talk About Down There” — and a content creator hoping to bust myths associated with sexual and reproductive health.
“I started out on social media as a physician because I was super lonely as a woman in medicine and wanted to connect with other doctor moms,” Dr. Lincoln said. “I was really talking to the 16-year-old version of myself…because nobody taught me.”
In her opening slides, Dr. Lincoln touched on her all-girls catholic school education and what the sexual health classes contained. The class, which was taught by an elderly nun named Sister Claire, learned from a big red book called “Morality,” which focused on abstinence and protecting one’s reputation.
“Basically…sex ed in this country is terrible, and you deserve to know how your body works because when I came [to WC I had] no clue,” Dr. Lincoln said.
One of the talk’s highlights was when Dr. Lincoln transitioned from talking about purity culture and the differences between perceived “dirtiness” and “cleanliness” surrounding sex to the products currently in the personal hygiene aisle that continue to push these shameful narratives.
Products like Vagasil and Summer’s Eve filled the screen as Dr. Lincoln pointed out that these products boast “cleanliness” — even though you should not be using these items “down there.”
“Shame culture is what has taken over. It sticks with us. It’s out there, it’s in the aisles [and in] these messages you see on TikTok, and it’s these influencers selling this garbage, but it all started back when we were elementary school kids and nobody would teach us the name of our body parts or anything like that,” Dr. Lincoln said.
Most of the talk was split into accessible sections on reproductive health, sexual pleasure, menstrual cycles, birth control, and abortions, and Dr. Lincoln incorporated multiple choice and true and false questions. Even if an audience member answered incorrectly, they still received a prize related to the talk’s topics, from tote bags to wine glasses — and even a party-appropriate beach ball.
Juniors Katie Opielski and Emily Marik attended the talk after hearing that Dr. Lincoln was a member of their sorority Zeta Tau Alpha while attending WC.
However, both Opielski and Marik recognized the talk’s importance and how surprised they were to hear about some of the sexual health myths.
“I was surprised to learn that you don’t have to pee after sex. I was shocked. I was taken aback,” Opielski said.
While Marik said she had an informative health class experience in high school, she still felt the talk was crucial for college students considering the concerning lack of sexual and reproductive health lessons across the country.
Dr. Lincoln included color-coded maps in her slides to show attendees which states simply require sexual education classes, regardless of correct or incorrect knowledge, compared to states that require sexual education classes with correct information and lessons on consent. She also highlighted which states are currently passing abortion bans.
This talk came at just the right time considering the Supreme Court hosted hearings on March 26 about the abortion drug mifepristone. Dr. Lincoln’s lessons were also crucial considering the nationwide issues surrounding the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 and the lack of access to period products, birth control, and abortions.
Along with her other roles, Dr. Lincoln also recently created a website called ThreeForFreedom to provide users with the opportunity to order prescribed birth control, emergency contraception, and abortion pills online regardless of which state one lives in.
At the talk’s conclusion, Dr. Lincoln reiterated her hope of making products and information more widely accessible, especially for high school and college students. She specifically encouraged WC students to reach out to the Health Center about making emergency contraceptives more accessible.
“When it comes to abortion bans or any restrictions on that, it’s not about that. It’s about control,” Dr. Lincoln said. “The point is that once we know more about how our bodies work, that means that we can take a role and we can have jobs and be out there, and that’s scary for people who might not want us in those positions. You do deserve to feel good, and it’s not a bad thing.”
Photo by Riley Dauber
Photo Caption: Before she spoke, Dr. Lincoln’s slideshow featured fun facts and multiple-choice questions related to the talk’s content.