{"id":424,"date":"2006-03-20T13:42:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-20T13:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=424"},"modified":"2006-03-20T13:42:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-20T13:42:00","slug":"messing-with-menstruation-historically-speaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2006\/03\/20\/messing-with-menstruation-historically-speaking\/","title":{"rendered":"Messing with menstruation, historically speaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are a woman born anywhere between 1960 and 1990, chances are you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read Judy Blume\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Are You There God? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Me, Margaret<\/em>. (Bonus points if you’re a guy and you’ve read it!) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easily one of the most important, influential books I read as a young woman. It was the first time I remember reading a book and thinking, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh wow, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just me.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Did you know, though, that in the late 1990s, the text was updated to reflect the modern state of feminine hygiene products?<\/p>\n

Whereas in the original novel, published in 1970, Margaret \u00e2\u20ac\u0153attached a Teenage Softie to the little hooks on my pink belt\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, in the 21st century version Margaret \u00e2\u20ac\u0153peeled the paper off the bottom of the pad\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pressed the sticky strip against my underpants.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

When I was in elementary school and reading this book for the first time, circa 1979 or 1980, the sanitary napkin belt had been banished, but the maxi-pad dispenser in the school washroom still stocked those diaperish inch-thick pads you clipped to your underpants with safety pins. The revolution to microthin protection and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwings\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 had yet to occur.<\/p>\n

When I first read that the publisher had updated Are You There God<\/em>, my immediate response was that it was a nice idea, making the story more relevant and accessible to modern readers. But then I started to really think about it, aided in part by a reading of Rebecca Traister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent article in Salon<\/a> (also excerpted in my weekend Ottawa Citizen<\/em> which, once again, I would link to if the Web site would load).<\/p>\n

The more I think about it, the more I wish the publishers had left the original version to stand. For one thing, how often to we go quietly mucking about with literature to \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcupdate\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 it? Should we apply the same reasoning to rewrite Catcher in the Rye<\/em> and substitute Holden Caufield\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hunting hat for a baseball cap while we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re at it?<\/p>\n

More importantly, though, is that by updating some of the seemingly inconsequential details in the novel, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re cutting tiny threads that tie us to our past. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good to know that even though some of the mechanics of the turbulent transition that is puberty might have changed, the underlying hopes, desires and expectations are the same, generation after generation.<\/p>\n

Traister, born in 1975, writes: <\/p>\n

And while it may seem minor \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so very minor, such a few small sentences in a 150-page book that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just about as much as God and making your boobs grow as it is about periods \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m actually glad for the sense it gave me that as recently as five years before I was born, girls had very different hassles during puberty. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad I know a bit about what they were. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad other young women know about some of the technology they can be grateful for (wings!) even if they, like me and many others, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t share Margaret\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s undiluted enthusiasm for the onset of monthly bleeding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I said earlier that Are You There God? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Me, Margaret<\/em> was one of the first times I thought to myself, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh wow, you mean it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just me?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And here we are, these many years later, discussing this wonderful, compact and timeless little book on the forum where I now turn to be reminded that no, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just me.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve long intended to stock our bookshelves with Judy Blume\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s books for the boys \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I think they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like SuperFudge, and Ramona. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll make sure to pick up this one too, if I can find a second-hand copy. They might never read it, but I know I will.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Was it a good idea to make the book more relevant to generations who grew up with \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwings\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, or should we have left well enough alone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you are a woman born anywhere between 1960 and 1990, chances are you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read Judy Blume\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Are You There God? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Me, Margaret. (Bonus points if you’re a guy and you’ve read it!) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easily one of the most important, influential books I read as a young woman. It was the first time I … Continue reading “Messing with menstruation, historically speaking”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}