My Little Red Book edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff

I admire the premise of this book: So often, young girls feel "weird" or "strange" because of events involving their bodies. The way to mollify their fears, as this book makes plain, is to point out that every young girl feels exactly the same fears, insecurities, etc. Back in the '60s, we called this exercise--of bringing to light the heretofore hidden feelings that every woman has--"consciousness raising." This book is a wonderful contemporary example.

So, OK, since I'm a guy, I've (obviously) never had a period. But since I'm fascinated by all things feminine, I've always listened intently when women have told me of the nuanced circumstances of their menarches: One woman endured years of painful self-consciousness on account of getting her first period at only nine years old. Another woman, of Catholic Mexican descent, burst into fearful tears--since she'd never been told about menstruation, and thought the blood meant something was dreadfully wrong. (The same lack of information occurs, author Nalebuff reports, to a stunning 87% of polled Pakistani women (page 7).)

So in reading this unique (and often poignant) book of first-person menarche-memoirs, I kept an eye out for the nuances. Where and what age did it take place? Who did she tell first? How did that person react? How did the girl feel? Did she receive outdated advice? (Hint: the landmark novella on the subject, Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, was published in 1970.) What did the event mean to them and their families/friends?

Girls' feelings ranged the gamut, as this anthology attests: Some felt fear; some felt joy; some felt overwhelmed; some felt irritated; some felt exposed; some felt relief; some felt ecstatic; some felt annoyed; some felt horrified; some felt embarrassed; some felt disappointment. Et cetera. In short, there's no "normal" way to feel about getting one's period. It's almost an intriguing kind of Rorschach test, according to YA author Michele Jaffe: "I discovered that how you react to Your First Period lets you see the beginnings of personality traits that are magnified as an adult" (page 25)

The book contains a variety of experiences from different eras: Menarche during slavery (page 41); the fear of "menotoxins" in the 1920s (page 21); a Depression-era orphanage (pp. 70ff); in India in 1962; in Kenya (pp. 134ff); while preparing U.S. Thanksgiving cranberry sauce (page 127); snorkeling in the Caribbean (p. 102); a bar mitzvah party (p. 106ff).

But while many girls are today given "The Period Talk" in gym class, this book reveals that so many questions often remain: Does a period happen only once? Does it only happen at certain hours of the day? How does one pronounce that tongue-twisting word "menstruation"? How can blood come out if you're a virgin--wouldn't the hymen keep it in? Should you put off using tampons until after marriage (because of the "virgin thing")? How much blood comes out during a first period? Why is the stain rust colored--all the pictures in books show red stains! Where's the belt--Judy Blume's book (from 1970) talks about a belt! Won't everyone notice this BIG pad--I can feel it! Won't this small tampon get lost inside me--I can't feel it! How do you dispense of used sanitary products? What if I go swimming and the tampon "floats out"? Will my dad still want me to mow the lawn?

And along the way, women share the life lessons and morals they learned from menstruation: "What getting periods teaches you," writes Bita Moghaddam, "is that life will not be fair [Boys don't have to deal with this!]; it will be full of nuisances and disasters. But you can handle it as long as you know what to wear" (page 155). "It means your body now has life for two" (page 183). Kate Zieman "thinks that first periods would be easier if we viewed them as one of the many steps toward adulthood instead of as automatic womanhood" (page 69). (This last point suggests an interesting insight: The girl/woman distinction isn't a "binary," neatly bifurcated by menarche; rather, the path from girl to woman runs along a continuum of discreet markers. And aren't the emotional markers far more important than the physiological ones? (Even Britney Spears seems to have noticed this!))

It made me sad to see the word "embarrassed" occur in so many of these accounts (Google Books counts 23 occurrences of the word). I couldn't help but notice how much the issues surrounding menarche dovetail with the constellation of similar issues surrounding (female, but not male) virginity--compare, especially, Jessica Valenti's masterful work The Purity Myth.

"Ultimately," writes Carol Tavris (in The Mismeasure of Woman), "the belief that menstruation...[is a] problem...for women is part of a larger assumption that female physiology itself is abnormal, deficient, and diseased. Because this view is so pervasive, it is easy to forget that it is not the only one possible." Here's hoping that this collection of honest sharing can bring us closer to a day when girls no longer meet menstruation with a sense of dread, embarrassment and shame--but rather with a sense of courage and self-appreciation.