When the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves was published in 1971, the 193-page text was nothing short of revolutionary. It grew out of what became a radical women's liberation movement that changed society from a world that looked like Mad Men to one that looked like Ms.
It not only challenged the medical establishment and its assumptions about women, it also encouraged women to explore their own bodies and provided, in unexpurgated terms, information about sexuality and reproduction that went far beyond the birds and bees.
Eliza Shulman, 37, got her first copy from her mother. She was 12; the year was 1986. "My friends and I read through it obsessively, giggling at a lot of parts but learning to normalize women's health and sexuality," says Shulman, who is now a family physician in Boston.
Written by a group of 12 who met at a women's conference in 1969 and became the Boston Women's Health Collective, the book has won accolades for its frank take on topics from abortion to masturbation and its eyebrow-raising line drawings of reproductive organs and genitalia. It was denounced as "obscene trash" by Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell.
The 40th anniversary is being celebrated Saturday at a symposium on women's health and human rights at Boston University with speakers from 12 countries, says Judy Norsigian, a founder and executive director of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective since 2001.
In 1970, she says, the word "feminism" wasn't part of her vocabulary, but she got the concept. Her mother was a role model, "railing about cultural norms of women," Norsigian says. "She wanted to be a doctor, and instead was a housewife. I didn't understand the structural and societal controls that made it impossible for her to realize some of these normal aspirations."
Now, the non-profit goes by the name Our Bodies, Ourselves, or OBOS, and has a website, www.ourbodiesourselves.org. More than 4 million copies of the book have been sold; an additional 300,000 have been donated to women's groups worldwide. It has been published in more than 20 languages and updated in nine incarnations, yet the collective struggles, Norsigian says.
"We're always on the edge of going under," she says. "Part of the problem is we have all these principles -- we won't take drug company money, or advertising, plus we're about raising consciousness. We're too radical for some funders and not radical enough for others. We're facing possibly going under next year."
The early books were about demystifying medical care, she says. At that time, nearly all obstetrician/gynecologists were men, and doctors saw themselves as godlike: "Women were treated basically as children by physicians."
Later editions reflect changes in attitudes and issues important to women's health. Recent editions address gender identity and sexual orientation, environmental health, menopause and aging. The first edition had a price of 75 cents. The new one, a hefty 848 pages, is $26.
The book's importance as the go-to resource, especially for young women, has spanned generations. "It was our Google," says Jennifer Hahn, 36, a nurse in Philadelphia who got a copy in nursing school. She and her roommates turned to the book as "a resource, not just for nursing, but just for knowing about women's rights and learning about the changes you'll experience as you get older."
Stephanie Gilmore, 41, got her first copy in high school in the mid-1980s. Now an assistant professor of women's and gender studies at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., she says the book, by working from the "premise that women are experts on their own bodies," embraces the different experiences of women's lives. "It made all of us feel like we were OK. So many people told women that they were bad simply for being a woman. OBOS said that we were, and are, acceptable, good and fabulous, no matter what."
It changed the way women talk about sex and their bodies, says Cecelia Horwitz, 69, of Rochester, N.Y. Women of her generation "didn't listen to our mothers," she says. "Our mothers had so many taboos and so many fears -- just the way they'd talk about your period as 'the curse' or 'your friend,' nothing in between. Women were afraid to talk about their bodies. This book gave them additional courage."
For many, it was inspirational. Shulman, who reviewed a chapter for the 2005 edition, says it was the book's objective, non-judgmental approach that "made me want to be the kind of adult who would talk to young women about their health and teach them not to be afraid."
As a family physician, she says, "I still meet so many women and girls of all ages who don't have critical information about their own health and sexuality. I wish I could give them all a copy of the book. I absolutely think it is still as relevant today as it was 40 years ago."
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