“Our Bodies, Ourselves,” the feminist classic that inspired millions of women to grab a copy of the Constitution and a hand mirror, is turning 40. To celebrate, the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective is issuing an overhauled and updated revision that brings the quintessential women’s movement manual into the chick-lit era.
In the early days of the women’s liberation movement, a dozen women meeting at a Boston conference workshop titled, “Women and their Bodies,” realized the medical establishment offered too little honest information presented from a female perspective. The group continued meeting and talking, creating a stapled newsprint booklet in 1970, which became an underground success.
Simon & Schuster eventually published an expanded edition, and the book became a runaway bestseller — the kind of book women gave friends, younger sisters and nieces — and a staple on college women’s studies syllabi.
The original 193-page collection of health information and women’s stories challenged the medical establishment, encouraged women to explore their own bodies and provided information about sexuality and reproduction that most women couldn’t get anywhere else.
Today women don’t lack for information. If a woman wants to locate a labia majora, she doesn’t need to look much further than TMZ. The challenge for the team of writers and editors who put together the now 825-page book was to provide women with a way to wade through all the information out there to find what is accurate.
“We debated it a lot: ‘Is there still a need for a book? Are people getting it all online?’ ” says Kiki Zeldes, senior editor. “The thing we came back to is this is something you go back to over and over. It’s still the book people pick up because ‘Uh-oh, I have this weird itch,’ and in the course of reading about the itch, they come across all this other stuff and get exposed to much bigger things.”
Due out Tuesday, the revision will be the book’s ninth print edition, and with so much information now available online (including at ourbodiesourselves.org), Zeldes says it could be the last.
With that in mind, the authors and editors decided to focus this edition on sexuality and reproductive health.
“With each revisit, ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ would get longer. It’s become a tome,” Zeldes said. “In the beginning, there were no other sources. Now, the reality is some of the topics, like heart disease in women, have good sources [online], and there is no way we can give it justice in three pages.”
Other big issues, like cervical cancer, nutrition and emotional health, have been omitted from this edition, too — an acknowledgment that the book can’t be everything to everyone.
“We would get tons of letters saying, ‘How come you have only one page on cervical cancer?’ or ‘How can you give my big issue one paragraph?’” Zeldes says. “That was the impetus to cut back. What people need more help with is evaluating the quality of the material and navigating through the tremendous amount information out there.”
Some of the additions and revisions that scream, “This is not your mother’s ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ include:
* Sex changes: The sexuality chapters include the concept of “enthusiastic consent,” a counterpart to “No Means No,” that says women have a right to enjoy the sex they’re having.
“Despite all this talk of empowering women, women’s sexuality is still defined by a powerful external culture,” Zeldes says. “For many young women sexuality is another pressure, like appearance, where you’re trying to be a certain way.”
Writers involved in the book say that if you ask some sexually active young women whether they like sex, they will look at you as though you asked them if they love visiting the dentist.
“I would hope that reading conversations like those that are in the book will help young women know that sexuality really is about them and their bodies and their experiences,” Zeldes says. “And that they have some autonomy.”
* Really relating: Previous editions’ relationships sections weren’t particularly groundbreaking — you don’t need a book to tell you “relationships take a lot of work.” So the editors of the new book put out a call, asking for women to participate in a month-long online conversation. From the hundreds of submissions, 37 women of all stripes, ages 18 to 63, were chosen to “chat” about everything from sex and love to family and cultural expectations. Their talk was honest, supportive and sometimes illuminating.
“People think we live in such a confessional culture, but what we realized is that it is still difficult and rare for many people to speak honestly about relationships — the ambiguities and contradictions,” Zeldes said. “People want to feel not alone. That’s what we wanted women reading the book to get.”
* Staying connected: “Our Bodies, Ourselves” has an ongoing blog that allows women to continue discussing and learning from one another.
The group is also hosting a symposium in Boston this weekend with women from 12 countries, including a presentation by Israeli and Palestinian women who have worked together on a version of the book published in Hebrew and Arabic.
“The Arabic, in particular, is the first of its kind in Israel and unique in the wider Arabic-speaking world, boldly addressing issues often taboo and silenced in Arab society,” according to a description of the project online.
“There is a long history of women working together to create better lives for themselves and their families,” Zeldes says. “I want a girl to read the book and realize that despite all the things that work against you, there are many, many people working to improve their own lives and the lives of other people.”