Reverse “the curse”
My Little Red Book inspires readers to act globally, think locally.
By Tori Rosin
Published: March 2nd, 2009 | 12:00am
My first period was a non-issue. I knew what was in my underwear, I knew where my supplies were, and my mother didn’t slap me when she heard the news. Still, I treated it as an embarrassment; something not to discuss unless absolutely necessary. I also didn’t want to know about the experiences of my relatives and friends.
After reading the experiences of some contributors in My Little Red Book, I didn’t know how good I had it. I could have had been in a situation like many of the book’s contributors, who either thought they were dying when they found blood in their underwear, or who were too ashamed to tell a parent or relative about it.
My heart went out to Joyce Maynard, who hid sanitary pads in a paper bag for nearly a year instead of telling her mother. “So she found out about my period. But there remained a hundred things – a thousand, a million – that I could not have discussed with her, or with anything,” Maynard wrote in “Out of the Closet.”
Conversely, in “The Lie,” Shalom Victor was so eager to menstruate that she told her mother she got her period early. When the event happened two days later, Victor wrote, “Unfortunately for me this true time, there was no one to tell.”
My Little Red Book seems to have two functions; to help young women realize menstruation is a fact of life, and to tell older women how lucky they are to be in a part of the world where Tampax is available on every corner.
I’m not sure if the book will be a big help to an adolescent; I wouldn’t have wanted to read this at 12. In my experience, women aren’t ready to talk about their first menstrual mishaps until far past high school.
The latter purpose of My Little Red Book is the strongest. Once I learned about what women in developing countries had to go through at menarche, I was amazed at how lucky I was.
For example, many young women in Africa can’t afford to buy pads or tampons. This means that when they have their period, they stay home from school. “If you miss school for that long, everybody knows why,” writes Thatcher Mweu in “Crushed Leaves in Kenya.” Mweu adds that girls are reluctant to return to school after their period ends due to embarrassment, which only hurts their education in the end.
Thankfully, editor Rachel Kauder Nalebuff includes information about groups like the Health and Water Foundation (healthandwater.org) in Kenya, which is working to eradicate this problem. The profits from My Little Red Book will be donated to a similar group in India. I hope other readers feel the same urgency to help their fellow woman after reading My Little Red Book.
Issue #44
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