Women Step Out of the Closet of Shame & Start Talking Openly About Periods

Most women remember their first periods and no matter what emotion or range of emotions they experienced on that day, they can still look back on it many years later and smile–for one reason or another. No matter what a woman thinks about her period, the bottom line is that it is with us for the long haul. It is one of our long-term relationships and even if we love it or hate it, it is with us for the majority of our lives; and if we live with our periods for the majority of our lives, why do women (in general) constantly feel shamed by it?

A great deal of women will give you an odd, ‘what planet are you from’ look if you ask them to tell you about their first periods. Many women (and especially men) will visibly become bothered if you dare speak its name during a conversation. Most men downright refuse to go on late-night or after work runs to the store to pick up a box of pads or tampons and all of these situations deal with the shame that is associated with menstruation. Sure, our lack of openness can be chalked up to menstruation happening to be an awkward subject, but it goes deeper than that, especially considering that it doesn’t have to be and it only is because our society has let itself become a woman-shaming society.

I have always been very open about my body, my sexuality, and the miracles that the body of a woman can perform in her lifetime. I honestly did not know where this openness came from, being raised by a single father, but I always had strong female role models in my life, one of which was my father’s girlfriend who became my mother-figure throughout my childhood. She taught me that the anatomy of a woman is beautiful and despite the abuse I had endured as a child from my mother (and the reason why my mother has not been in my life for more than a decade) there is nothing to feel ashamed about when it comes to your own body because it is yours and no one else’s and no one can tell you that you are not beautiful and that your body is in any way something to be looked at as vulgar or disgusting; including menstruation. For a while I thought that perhaps my natural-born feminism was something instilled in me from my upbringing, but from running this website (and hello, have you noticed the name of my website?) as well as paying special attention to the women who come from my generation, I am noticing that there are a great deal of women who are coming out of the shame closet; who are demanding that the awkwardness associated with the bodies and bodily functions of women are what is truly shameful and that the period is something that should be spoken about openly and honestly. That is exactly what Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, a young woman of 18, did when she started asking women to tell her about their first periods.

Nalebuff realized with her own first period and hearing the story of her Aunt’s first period that she had kept a secret for over 50 years, that people needed to start talking about this and the other events that happen in a young woman’s life that people are simply refusing to talk about openly. Something needs to be done in this society that would let this silence continue for so long and keep so many women captive in its process of women-shaming. And so she started collecting stories from women and girls all over the world about their first periods and now presents us with an absolute gem, My Little Red Book, for women and girls of all ages who are either just about to get their periods, just got it and feel awkward about it, or for women who remember their first periods vividly and celebrate the right of passage that we as women have to talk openly about it.

There are 90 short stories in all and several names we’ve come to know through their own books and activism work make appearances in this book, including Jennifer Baumgardner, Meg Cabot, Megan McCafferty, and Gloria Steinem’s 1978 essay, ‘If Men Could Menstruate’ which originally had appeared in Ms. Magazine also appears in this book. There are stories of how many women thought themselves to be dying when noticing the small stain in their panties, women who “faked” their periods when knowing that their friends had gotten their periods before them, and my favorite is a story about a mother who when her daughter first got her period and felt awkward about it, she had to do something to mark the day and so she bought her daughter a vase full of red roses and in another story, her daughter talks about how special those roses were to here and how she had kept the vase for years after that first period. Another one of my favorite parts of this book is that so many women talk about the Judy Blume book, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret a book that you would think comes with all little girls at birth due to how widely-read and coveted it is, albeit a bit out of date for those of us who have never seen these menstrual pad belts Margaret speaks of.

My Little Red Book is a must for all women who have ever felt shamed or awkward about their period and also for every girl’s first period kit.

All of the proceeds of this book are being donated to charity because there is a lot to be done as far as making the bodily functions of women something that can be widely spoken about. There is also a great need for activism in countries like Africa, where because of the lack of menstrual supplies, a young girl will not receive the education that she is entitled to because one week out of every month will be spent out of school due to her period.

In the back of My Little Red Book, there is a section of books to read about periods including, yes, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and there is also a Do More section where your support for organizations like Planned Parenthood, who are the largest provider of sexual education and health services in the United States, as well as Choice USA, a youth-led organization that seeks to protect women’s reproductive rights, can tremendously help girls receive the sexual education that they too are entitled to. A company that I would like to add, is Lunapads. Lunapads are based in Canada and make reusable, cloth and fleece pads. Not only do they make a transition from disposables to reusable pads easy, their pads are completely harmless, unlike disposables that contain bleach and synthetic fibers. Lunapads also does great work for girls in Africa by giving them their Pads4Girls Kit and each pad has a lifespan of 5 years or more that will help African girls attend school when they have their periods.

You can find out even more about this book and even share your own first period story at MyLittleRedBook.net.

Rating:
Buy the Book!

Book Review: Be True to Yourself: A Daily Guide for Teenage Girls

I can vividly remember my “awkward teenage years.” It’s no surprise, really; they didn’t happen that long ago and looking back at those years objectively now, I have come to one definitive summary of those awkward teenage years–They are terrifying.

I recently experienced what happens when teenage rebellion and teenage angst is not simply a phase that one evolves out of, but a genuine problem that requires a sufficient amount of help with my 16 year old sister. There are hundreds of issues that affect the average teen every day and one of those issues is most often parents. Teenagers simply do not feel comfortable talking to their parents about important life issues. While that is unfortunate, I believe that it is a part of the growing up process to withdraw from your parents and is not something that can be helped because very, very few parents have that text book “perfect” relationship with their teens.

One of the most prominent activities I have always had in my life is reading. I have always had a genuine love for the written word and thankfully that trait has also emerged in my younger sister. I read Be True to Yourself and because it deals with the hundreds (366, to be exact) of issues that teens face on a daily basis, I knew that my sister would gain some wisdom from the book.

While the sub-title of Be True to Yourself is A Daily Guide for Teenage Girls, it really is just that. The book tackles one issue per day and gives teenage girls a daily message and is easily the companion they need during the years they need it the most, offering encouragement and daring teens to look inside of themselves for the answers to their true problems.

Be True to Yourself is the perfect gift for any teenage girl, no other gift could help them more and instead of being presented in a step-by-step self help kind of way, the format is a lot more fun and appealing to even girls who don’t like to read.

Rating:
Buy the Book!

Book Review: Breathe My Name by R.A. Nelson

Breathe My Name is both an electric and terrifying story that you can’t help but devour in big, heaping gulps.

Frances Robinson is a quiet, mouse-like eighteen year old living in a beautiful house with a loving and devoted family. She has a great best friend and a charming (and completely cute) boyfriend named Nix who recently moved from Louisiana. Her life is the definition of a full and happy but Frances has a secret. A secret about her past; about her childhood, her three sisters and a mother and father she had before being adopted by the Robinsons. She and her childhood family lived in the country of Fireless, a country that was beautiful, mysterious and made up by her birth mother. But as much as Fireless was make believe, the lure of the country led Frances’ mother into a maddening depression until she one day, in the quiet of a morning like any other, she suffocated her children one by one with a pillow. Frances’ mother led her into the bedroom where she would suffocate her too and when Frances saw her three younger sisters laid out on the bed, their eyes open and their bodies limp with the life snuffed out of them, she began to fight. She fought until she escaped and she escaped all the way to Alabama with the Robinsons; states away from her childhood home, her deranged mother, her father who was hardly around due to working long and strenuous hours, and away from her three sisters who had been murdered at their mother’s hand.

Frances starts noticing a man in a car several times outside of her house and outside of her school and one day she comes home to find the man standing in her kitchen with her parents. He tells her that her mother, who plead out of jail time for murdering her children due to mental insanity, is in a halfway house and has sent a letter for her. When Frances opens this letter, it is filled with several blank sheets of paper–Except for one that simply says “I need to see you. Please come right away. We have to finish.”

Frances makes the decision to travel the few states away from her family in Alabama to the halfway house her mother is now located in. In typical “curiosity killed the cat” fashion, Frances needs to see what happened to her mother and most of all, what ‘We have to finish.” means.

Her journey leads her back to her childhood–The good times that she had with her mother and also the last day that she saw her. It sends her through a mix of emotions and also feelings she never knew that she could have. Breathe My Name is a beautifully written novel full of surprises that intrigues you with its story the moment you start reading it. I loved the story and found it to be better than I thought it would be when I first read the synopsis on the inside cover. It also brought me back to my own childhood, having been abandoned by my own mother after six years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. It arouse feelings and thoughts inside of me that I didn’t know I could have and I found myself instantly sympathizing with Frances and the mixture of feelings she was having and the nightmares that awoke her night after night about her childhood.

Breathe My Name is a novel that will chill you to the bone and then console you.

Rating:
Buy the Book!

Book Review: Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway

When I mentioned to a self-proclaimed bibliophile friend of mine that I was reading Audrey, Wait! she immediately told me what a fun book it was and how much she had enjoyed reading it. So far, any book this friend of mine has thought was good, I have been inclined to agree with her, so before I even began this book, I was excited about it and the excitement lasted me right through the entire book.

Audrey, Wait! is a fun, fast-paced book that surprised me again and again just because I was ecstatic that the author, Robin Benway, was obviously into the same music as I am. You see, when you see your favorite bands’ lyrics featured in a book and used as the names of the chapters, which I thought was very clever, you get excited, especially when we’re talking the likes of The Sounds, Radiohead, Death Cab for Cutie, Belle & Sebastian, The Cure, Cowboy Junkies, Patti Smith, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Regina Spektor and many, many other fabulous musicians.

This is a story about Audrey, a normal teenage girl who broke up with her boyfriend. The story starts out simple enough; music-obsessed girl is dating musician boyfriend, girl breaks up with boyfriend, musician boyfriend writes an angry song about their breakup and plays it for pretty much the entire student body at a show that same night. But what happens next is very unlike any standard teen drama–Musician boyfriend’s band, The Do-Gooders, makes it big with the song Audrey’s now ex-boyfriend wrote about their breakup and pretty soon, Audrey is receiving hundreds of phone calls, IMs and emails a day and dodging reporters who are after all of the dirt on Audrey, Evan and their breakup. While appearing in tabloids, on message boards and in the minds of teens everywhere, Audrey enjoys her new-found fame a little bit, getting into the VIP section of a concert for one of her favorite bands and making out with the lead singer (Hello every teenage girl’s fantasy!) but as the tension Audrey feels because of her ex-boyfriend’s song rises, she realizes what she has to do–Go out there and tell everyone her side of the story, and that is exactly what Audrey, Wait! is doing.

The dialogue this book possesses is absolutely hilarious and unlike a lot of books out there, each and every character is interesting in their own way, you want to know more about every character as the story presses on. Even Audrey’s parents are great, and also very funny. This book is highly enjoyable for anyone of any age who ever wondered what it would really be like to be famous. You can read the first chapter of the book here and you can also check out Robin Benway’s blog here, which I highly recommend or add her as a friend on Last.fm, because really, who’s a music lover with internet access who doesn’t have a Last.fm account?

Rating:
Buy the Book!

C. Leigh Purtill Talks Books with Connie Martinson

We’ve reviewed her two books, Love, Meg and All About Vee and now we have the chance to get to know C. Leigh Purtill a little better. We find out more about the books, the original titles and plots before the editor and publishers got a hold of them and even better, we find out more about Purtill herself in this two-part interview with Connie Martinson on Connie Martinson Talks Books.

Book Review: Love, Meg by C. Leigh Purtill

Meg and her sister Lucie have always moved around a lot; sometimes three times in one year, they will pack up their belongings, move into a new apartment where Lucie starts a new, dead end, crappy job and Meg will start a new school. Meg’s life seems as shaken and impermanent as the boxes of belongings that never receive a proper place in their new apartment and the WalMart bought, particle board furniture that isn’t likely to survive many more life altering moves.

Because of their sporadic lifestyle, Meg has become accustomed to starting new schools and reinventing herself; she has went by a handful of different names as she grew up and has settled in with being the permanent new girl, finding a new friend to socialize with until her time in that neighborhood was through where she would be forced to repeat the same steps again and again.

Meg was told by Lucie throughout her life that their parents had died, which is why Meg had never known any parental figure besides her older sister. But while Lucie was the only parental figure in Meg’s life, she did not play that part in her sister’s life and often barely played the part of her sister. Lucie was often consumed by selfishness; with her string of boyfriends, how she felt, what she was going through and while there were elements that Lucie did try to provide an okay life for Meg, Meg had been disappointed by Lucie and their life far too many times.

While her sister was busy living her life and Meg feeling as if she didn’t truly belong there, or anywhere, Meg confided in the Friends celebrity, Jennifer Aniston, to get her through the rough times in her life. For years, she and Jennifer had exchanged letters about what Meg was going through at the time, how she was feeling and Jen would respond with worldly advice always leading Meg in the right direction. Even when Jen’s letters had stopped, Meg kept writing for years after and always thought of Jen as the supportive friend she had known her to be through her letters.

When Meg finds out that Lucie isn’t the only family that she has and that she had been lied to her entire life by Lucie; the only person she has had to count on and trust, Meg decides that upon hearing about a family she never knew she had, she wants to know more. In hopes to experience what a real family feels like and have a life that Lucie had always failed to give her, Meg travels across the country, from Hollywood, California to Astoria, New York to live with her Uncle Lonnie and Grandmother, Alma.

Meg’s life in Astoria is completely different from the life she lead in Hollywood. For the first time in her life, and after a little adjusting, she felt at home, as if she had a place of permanence. She goes on to become friends with a small clique of three other girls and makes a life for herself in New York while helping her Uncle with her Grandmother, who is suffering from cancer due to being a life-long smoker. The life Meg makes for herself in New York, while it does hold its own set of problems and setbacks, is a great experience for Meg and what she finds out about herself and others in New York gives her the opportunity to find out the truth about the life that Lucie had never spoken of to Meg. For the first time in her life, Meg experiences what it is like to have best friends, to have a first date and to have her first boyfriend, Juny; the older brother of her new best friend–Who is such a sweet and amazing guy that made me immediately think that every woman needs to have Juny in her life.

Throughout her time in New York and learning more about herself and her family, Meg starts to understand Lucie more than she thought possible. Meg truly makes the best out of everything she is given in life and just with the way she starts to think by the end of the book makes you realize how grown up Meg really is, taking on responsibilities and putting her life into perspective. She makes life altering decisions and successfully deals with what life throws at her, coming out of her experiences as a well-balanced, intelligent young adult who has taken control of her own life and realizes where she belongs.

Love, Meg was a fast, exciting and exceptional read. Though I did see the twists and turns Meg’s life makes throughout the novel coming before they happened, that in no way means that Purtill doesn’t know how to put together a truly enjoyable novel. I just happen to be a self-proclaimed bookworm, am a significantly well read person and also have a knack for guessing the end of thriller movies. It is also worthy to keep in mind that Purtill’s novels fall under the category of young adult and most definitely excite and thrill the pants off of her target market, while also succeeding in giving adult women a fast paced and gratifying read.

Rating:
Buy the Book!

If you are particularly interested in C. Leigh Purtill’s work, life, or random thoughts, you should definitely check out her blog here. Even her blog posts are especially interesting.

Book Review: All About Vee by C. Leigh Purtill

Veronica May is a pretty standard teenager. At eighteen years old, she is bubbly, caring and has a few great friends known as ‘The Vees,’ named simply after the first letter in all of their first names. She is a confident actress, star of her school and city theater in her hometown of Chester, Arizona and she is absolutely gorgeous–All 217 pounds of her.

While Veronica loves her life in Chester, she loves the spotlight even more and craves the success that as a big city actor, she knows she could achieve.

Once her father, a widower librarian, decides to finally marry his girlfriend of ten years and the city theater casting a play in which there are no female lead roles, Veronica feels as if she is being replaced not only in her household, but in her whole city. With her father’s reluctance to talk to Veronica about her deceased mother and provide his child with any closure, she decides to make her dream of being a successful actress a reality after finding some old letters that her mother had written her father in the attic. Veronica learns that her mother was also an aspiring actress who left her life in a little city in pursuit of becoming successful in LA–And that is just where Veronica heads to start her big city life.

Veronica drives to LA and stays with one of her childhood friends and fellow Vee and soon learns that life in LA is nothing like she had imagined and that in order to be a successful actress, you don’t merely have to be good at acting. While learning the ropes of this new city and spending her life savings on head shots and a myriad of acting, yoga and movement classes, Veronica realizes that being confident and talented are the least sought after attributes when it comes to being an actress.

Struggling with sending head shots, waiting for call backs and going on cattle calls and auditions, Veronica starts working as a barista and makes friends with two other fellow actors. She loves her job at the coffee shop and her new friends, but her attraction to the manager is also weighing down hard on her path to stardom.

All About Vee is a must-read book for all young teenage girls, in my opinion, for the simple fact that Purtill illustrates how women who aren’t a size 0 are treated not only in LA and not only because they are striving to become actresses, but all across this country. She gives the weight epidemic that plagues so many young girls a story and luckily, Veronica does not change a thing about her weight throughout the book, which I was impressed with.

Through her time in LA, Veronica learns that those who you think are your friends can change and become people you don’t want to associate yourself with, that people can be brutal and backstabbing and to always remember who the people that love you are because those will be the people who want and help you to succeed in life.

Rating:
Buy the Book!

Book Review: Hex Education by Emily Gould and Zareen Jaffery

I recently read this book on a whim and to tame the inner fifteen year old girl in me with a love for young adult books. I am a firm believer that while you can read any subject of book that interests you, sometimes you just need a little ‘cute;’ and that is exactly what this book brings to the table.

Hex Education is about a young teenage girl, Sophie Stone, who is reluctant (to say the least) to leave her home in LA and move to her father’s home town of Mythic, Massachusetts in order to save the town from odd . Mythic, most likely inspired by Salem, Massachusetts, is a city whose history is based on the occult and witchcraft. She is a shoe in to not fit in, her parents being horror filmmakers and her spending her entire existence trying to be just another normal teenager rid of anything witchcraft-oriented.

While at first Sophie comes off as spoiled and has a personality that would immediately turn people away from wanting to be around her, we see her personality evolve as she comes to terms with being in Mythic and settles in with her new friends. But her friends, who have the power to turn something into anything they please, see a quality in Sophie that she didn’t know she had herself.

Hex Education is a very lightweight read, it’s resolution feels a bit rushed and I would have liked a little more story towards the end, but overall it is very cute and witty and is a must read if you’ve ever been interested in witchcraft of any kind.

Rating:
Buy the Book!