Ladies, Let's Chat

By Melissa Feldsher in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 27, 2009 6:45PM

Men, best to look away. Go back to your GTA IV or your Bulls game or your secret collection of British comedies. Are you gone? Ok, then.

Ladies, let’s talk about periods. Remember that first petrifying experience in the “feminine care” section of a CVS? The bewilderment of looking into your underpants and seeing that you’ve “become a woman?” The sheer mortification of your mother handing you a book about puberty and then running into the next room? Rachel Kauder Nalebuff sure does.

Nalebuff’s My Little Red Book assembles 92 short stories by women on the subject of their first period. While mining this territory could easily turn into a Chicken Soup for the Soul sap-fest or a Motrin-popping cringe caper, Nalebuff sticks to succinct paragraphs that avoid platitudes. A reprint of Gloria Steinem’s “If Men Could Menstruate” stands alongside tales about text-messaging with Nalebuff interviewing the young and old, foreign and domestic about the most universal of female experiences.

Nalebuff is not only donating all of the proceeds to women’s health charities, she’s created a modern anthology for mothers to leave on the pillows of their pre-teen daughters. Oh, and she’s starting Yale University next fall. Let’s just hope her Poli. Sci. class doesn’t cover Mao’s Little Red Book.

BY: Melissa Feldsher