A new film reveals just how hard it was to make the ‘female Viagra’

After Viagra came to market in 1998, women began clamoring for a drug of their own. But it has taken decades for the medical community to take women’s sexual health seriously—and even longer to develop and approve a drug that improves women’s libido.

A new documentary called The Pink Pill: Sex, Drugs, and Who Has Control, premiering at the DOC NYC film festival, explores the fight to launch Addyi, a drug known as “the female Viagra.” Directed by Aisling Chin-Yee, the film follows Cindy Eckert, the founder of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, who worked for five years to bring Addyi to market, which she managed to do in 2015. But just as fascinating, the film explores society’s perception of women’s sexuality and whether women have a right to sexual pleasure.

The film also has an unusual backer. Knix, the underwear startup known for its period panties, provided the capital to bring this film to completion, and Knix founder Joanna Griffiths serves as an executive producer. It’s an interesting strategy that allows Knix to be part of a broader conversation about women’s rights while also potentially introducing the brand to new consumers.

The Government’s Effort to Block Addyi

Low libido is a widespread problem among women. In this film, women talk about how their desire for sex can suddenly dry up, harming their romantic relationships and lowering their quality of life. But while men’s loss of sexual desire is treated as a medical problem, women’s sexual problems have been dismissed. Women describe their doctors telling them to drink some wine or read a steamy romance novel to get themselves in the mood.

Then, in 2009, a German pharmaceutical company stumbled across a breakthrough. A medication originally developed to treat depression was found to improve women’s sexual desire. But when the company tried to bring it to market, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected the drug—citing concerns about its effectiveness and side effects—and it was abandoned.

Enter Eckert, a pharmaceutical executive who had struggled with low libido herself. She believed it was worth taking on the FDA. She bought the drug from the German company for $5 million and went back to the federal agency to ask what trial data was required to approve it. But as she met the FDA’s demands, it kept coming back to her with new issues.

Chin-Yee’s documentary makes the case that the FDA had a higher standard for Addyi than it did for other drugs because it was meant for women. For instance, one side effect of Addyi is sleepiness, which is true of many medications on the market. But the FDA wanted to block Addyi out of concern that a woman might take the drug at night, then fall asleep while driving her kids to school the next day.

In response, Eckert poured more than $1 million into a driving study that showed women actually drove better after taking Addyi, likely because they slept better. “[Their concerns were] very much about protecting women because they might not make good choices,” says Dr. Anita Clayton, an OB-GYN professor at the University of Virginia whose clinical practice and research focus on women’s mental health and sexual dysfunctions.

Eckert was confronted with other FDA roadblocks for five years, and kept working to meet the organization’s requirements. During this period, the fight to launch the drug became a broader movement around a woman’s right to experience sexual pleasure, with many women’s organizations—including the Black Women’s Health Imperative and Jewish Women International—advocating for the FDA to approve Addyi.

There was also backlash. People argued that the drug wasn’t necessary because women are physically capable of having sex even if they aren’t aroused, whereas men cannot. Others argued that it’s normal for women not to enjoy sex after it’s no longer required for reproduction, such as after giving birth or entering menopause.

In the end, however, Eckert managed to jump through every last hoop, and the FDA approved the drug for use in 2015; it became widely available in 2017. But the drug has had disappointing sales and has not become as successful as Viagra. In December 2024, however, Eckert’s company received $45.6 million in late-stage VC funding, and is currently generating revenue. So there’s hope that more women will feel comfortable talking to their doctors about low libido, and that doctors will prescribe Addyi.

When a Brand Becomes a Film Producer

Knix founder Griffiths fell in love with The Pink Pill when it came across her desk two years ago when Chin-Yee was in the final stages of filming it. “It raises so many important questions about women’s sexuality,” she says. “It sparks so many further conversations about everything from our political climate to the role that sex plays over the course of a woman’s life.”

In 2023, at the Banff World Media Festival, Griffiths announced that Knix was partnering with production studio Catalyst to launch Docs for Change, a project that would identify promising female documentary filmmakers and finance, develop, produce, and distribute their films. A large number of filmmakers applied, but The Pink Pill stood out because it shed light on an area of women’s health that has long been overlooked.

The topic of the film isn’t directly related to Knix’s business, which is selling high-performance underwear and clothing, like period panties and teen bras. But over the years, Griffiths has tried to weave the brand into broader conversations that affect women. In 2021, for instance, the company launched Life After Birth, an art exhibit and book that documents how women’s bodies change after childbirth. Projects like this aren’t necessarily designed to market products, but rather to associate the brand with broader ideas. “We want our customers to know that we are advocating for them,” she says.

Frida, a brand for babies and new moms, did something similar when it recently commissioned a statue of a postpartum woman that is currently being exhibited around the world.

Griffiths believes funding films and art is more rewarding than many of the other things that consumer brands spend their marketing budgets on, like expensive dinners and influencer trips. “You can spend $90,000 on a fancy dinner with beautiful florals for just small groups of celebrities and influencers,” she says. “But a film is by definition designed for a mass audience. The goal is to get as many people as possible to watch it.”

To that end, Knix will help disseminate The Pink Pill via free movie screenings in the U.S. and Canada, and is working to find streaming services to carry it. Knix is also going to launch “screening kits” so people can host parties in their homes where they’ll watch the movie with friends and then have a conversation about it with discussion questions.

It’s a novel approach to marketing, but Griffiths believes it’s already paying off. “We’re already part of so many big conversations about women’s health,” she says. “We want to continue doing so.”

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