Saturday, January 22, 2005

My latest book idea

"The Lore of the Rag," (not to be confused with The Lord of the Rings):

A non-fiction collection of anything and everything you ever wanted to know -- and then some -- about menstruation.

Chapter 1: The Biology of Menstruation
Chapter 2: Menarche (including factoids about cultural rituals to recognize girls' first periods, the fluctuations in age of menarche due to environmental factors, images of those horrible "educational" books about puberty you get in middle school; also, anecdotal accounts of women's first periods)
Chapter 3: Menstruation through the Ages (historical information on how women dealth with and what they thought about their monthy bleeding)
Chapter 4: Extreme Menstruation (including Guiness Book of Records'-type data on longest continual, youngest and oldest menstruaters, and Ripley's Believe It or Not tales of menstral surprise: towns where all the women begin bleeding on the same day, etc.)
Chapter 5: Culture and Menstruation (or Ritual and Menstruation: how do modern cultures recognize this aspect of womanhood)
Chapter 6: Variations from the routine (more medical information on abnormal menstruation, its causes and treatment...including meditations on what "normal" menstruation is...discussion of how stress and other factors (starvation, etc.) affect menstruation)
Chapter 7: Menopause (the same combination of medical, anthropological and anecdotal information as in other chapters).

Please, someone, write this book (or let me know if you already have). I'll never get the chance, but I'd love to read it. By the way, if it sounds interesting and you haven't read Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography, you should.

In the meantime, here's the web-based Museum of Menstruation.

2 Comments:

Blogger Julie said...

YOU should write that book! What a marvelous idea! And what a totally cool website (MUM). I think I'm going to give my Keeper another try.

10:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I probably wouldn't read it (sorry), but I think it's a swell idea, and I know I'd buy a copy for my wife.

_Client Maynard

11:16 AM  

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