| When I learned that
the keynote speaker at this year’s Quinnipiac University
Women’s Conference on Creativity would be Judy Norsigian,
executive director and a founder of the Boston Women’s
Health Book Collective, I knew this was one conference I could
not miss.
Judy is a co-author of “Our Bodies, Ourselves,”
a women’s health reference book that was written by
and for women. My own dog-eared second copy was published
in 1998, and I bought my other well-used volume, “Ourselves,
Growing Older” a few years later.
The history of “Our Bodies, Ourselves” is a
testament to what a handful of bright, determined women
can accomplish. In 1969, 12 women met during a women’s
liberation conference in the Boston area at a workshop on
Women and Their Bodies. At that time, 98 percent of OB-GYNs
were men, and women were socialized to be good girls and
not to ask questions. In talking about their experiences
with doctors and in sharing their knowledge about their
bodies, they eventually formed the Doctor’s Group,
the forerunner to the Boston’s Women’s Health
Collective.
These women, the youngest 23 and the oldest 39, after much
discussion and research, finally produced a modest booklet
entitled, Women and Their Bodies, which was published in
1970. That booklet put women’s health in a radically
new political and social context, became an underground
success, and only three years later, Simon & Schuster
published an expanded version, “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”
The latest edition (which I purchased for my daughter,
Marianne) is 832 pages and is, according to Susan Love,
M.D., “truly the bible on women’s health.”
Karen Carlson, a doctor and deputy director of the Center
for Excellence in Women’s Health at Harvard Medical
School, calls the book “a vital resource for all women.”
My personal feeling is that any woman who wants to be an
active participant in her own health care, will find this
book an empowering tool as well as a dependable reference.
As an example, the latest edition features a chapter on
Body Image in which it takes the media to task for the fact
that for many women, life can seem like a beauty pageant;
that throughout every phase of our lives our appearance
is judged and critiqued. One of the unfortunate health results
has been anorexia with young girls striving to become “model
thin” and the fact that cosmetic surgery is the fastest-growing
specialty with women representing 90 percent of the patients.
And it is not just the wealthy who are unhappy with the
way they look. Two-thirds of the women undergoing cosmetic
surgery had family incomes of less than $50,000.
Incidentally, since we women are cosmetic addicts, one
good Web site to check out the safety of the products we
use is www.safecosmetics.org. Our advertising about new
products is often inaccurate or incomplete and Norsigian
pointed out that today in America, there is a dangerous
culture of the “quick fix” or a “pill
for every ill.”
The women of the Boston Women’s Health Collective
didn’t stop with writing one book. Additionally, they
acted as midwives to groups in other countries as far flung
as Senegal, China, Nepal and Turkey to help them create
their own versions. Many of their partners live in places
where accurate health information is scarce or nonexistent.
Some groups even face threats as they try to empower women
and girls in their communities, but the Global Our Bodies
Ourselves network is an exciting example of the strength
of women’s voices raised in action, informing, leading
and changing their communities.
Here at home, since the population of people over 65 is
overwhelmingly female, they are active in encouraging women
to use their political clout to fight for programs that
will provide a continuum of services for our older years
that acknowledge the diversity of our living situations
and economic resources. Their newsletter quotes an old Chinese
proverb which I find delightfully appropriate, “Women
Hold Up Half The Sky.”
Jean Cherni is founder of Senior
Living Solutions, a retirement advisory service. Contact
her at jeancherni@sbcglobal.net or 15 The Ponds, Branford
06405.
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