In the Open at Last, a Secret All Women Share

[groovedaddy]

Seldom can a book stretch to accommodate both its author’s and its publisher’s fondest hopes: that it be original yet universal, artistic yet practical, and likely to sell briskly for centuries to come.

To understand why Rachel Kauder Nalebuff’s “My Little Red Book” manages all of the above, you need only muse for a moment on the fact that your local Victoria’s Secret, that high temple of undress, has private dressing rooms. Or that “Hair” on Broadway features full frontal nudity on stage and the usual segregated men’s and ladies’ rooms at intermission. Or that sex education still routinely proceeds in single-sex classes.

In other words, for all our public exploration of everyone else’s bodies, our own personal specimens remain quite private. So when it comes to the onset of menstruation, it is the rare girl who will launch an enthusiastic dialogue with family or friends on the subject. Far more typical is she who enters the feminine-products aisle alone (and returns there alone for the duration).

To 18-year-old Rachel Nalebuff, this particular privacy made no sense. Reasoning that every lonely soul wandering through Walgreens has a story to tell, she was inspired to assemble a collection of 92 short reflections by women on the subject of their first period.

At this point, male readers may want to go outside and toss a ball around for a while. No matter how sympathetic, how curious or how deeply interested in life’s little yuck factors you are, this collection is unlikely to hold more than the mildest intellectual appeal for you. But it is hard to imagine any woman, from the most straitlaced and body-denying to the most uninhibited and body-embracing, who will not read right through it with pure enjoyment, small flashes of recognition and the urge to buy it for every female preteen in sight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/health/views/24book.html?th&emc=th

[Happyhippychick]

1. It is a pretty major milestone and it's true that we are taught to not mention it in mixed company.

What a great idea this book is, I will be buying it for my daughter.

[TlalocW]

2. Oh... I thought the so-called secret was

They all find me hot, hot, hot. I was just wondering why that fact was being called a secret. :)

TlalocW

[SidDithers]

3. My daughter turns 11 tomorrow...

a copy of this book might not be a bad idea.

Thanks for posting.

Sid

[Warpy]

4. Ooh, I wish I still had friends with preteen daughters

I'd buy this book for all of them.

My mother got into hot water in more than one neighborhood for telling the preteen girls what was going to happen to them and that it wasn't a big deal and how to cope with it. My mother had been alone when hers first started and thought she was dying.

I was 15 and I thought I was going to skip the whole messy business, but no, the damned thing did eventually start.

One of the great compensations for getting older and losing your figure and your looks is being able to thumb your nose at the fertility aisle of the supermarket: "sanitary" products on one side and baby crap on the other.

We need to prepare daughters for that part, too.

[lizerdbits]

5. My mom also thought she was dying

Apparently her strict catholic upbringing didn't mention such terrible things before they happened.

This reminds me of a movie I saw in college called "Where the spirit lives." IIRC, natives in Canada were sent to a religious school to "civilize" them, as they used to call destruction of their culture. Before being sent off one girl had her first one and it was cause for celebration. Once at the school a friend gets hers, joyfully tells a teacher, who immediately shushes her in horror for saying it out loud and sends her to the nurse. That wasn't the main plot, but I always remembered that scene due to the marked difference in how it was perceived.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

6. A relevant website.

Harry Finley's Museum of Menstruation:

www.mum.org