The New, Invasive Ways Women Are Encouraged to Freeze Their Eggs

One of the Instagram ads for Extend Fertility, a New York–based egg-freezing service for women, presents two images. First, there’s a hand with freshly manicured nails, followed by a sassy pink cartoon of a human egg with big eyes and long lashes. “If you can afford this,” text reads above the nails, “you can afford this,” referring to the cartoon egg.

The ad, part of a campaign created by the woman who the Aflac duck and the iconic “!” Herbal Essences commercials of the late 1990s, is intended to raise awareness among Millennial women about egg freezing’s capacity to extend their potential fertility well into their 40s. It’s just one of a number of marketing experiments that Extended Fertility and several other egg-freezing upstarts are running to get the word out about their services. Kindbody, which debuted its first New York City clinic in 2018, takes an across the country to dole out free hormone tests. Trellis Health recently popped up at a location of the indoor-cycling studio Flywheel to offer a women’s-empowerment spin class. All three companies partner with popular figures on social media, who spread the gospel of reproductive control to their own