The Body Project (a review in however many parts i feel like)

"The Girl Scouts of America (GSA) was one of the first groups to systematically teach menstruation to girls. By the 1920s, a girl in pursuit of the Health Winner Badge had to learn about the physiology of menstruation and also have a private talk with her troop leader about it. She was also required to tell her leader when she was menstruating, on the grounds that the older woman would help her "overdoing it" and determine an appropriate level of activity*. The leadership f the Girl Scouts recognized the difficulty of asking volunteer troop leaders to position themselves between the natural authority (the mother) and the professional expert (the physician, biology teacher or nurse), but they also knew hat some girls had no one else to turn to for information.AS a result, GSA training materials highlighted information about the hygiene of the female body and utilized the most enlightened strategies for talking to girls about menstruation."

* it is interesting to me that they talk about the "appropriate level" of activity, as, at the time (and now), menstruation is treated as an illness & one must automatically need to rest or withdraw from activity. for myself & many of my fellow menstruateurs energy can vary hugely from one period to the next. some months i just want to crawl in bed, and feel that my legs don't work quite right. other months i'm just fine.

i really enjoy the thoroughness of this book in terms of its selection of materials, it consists of popular pamphlets from different eras and personal diaries and news stories and lots of other miscellanea. i think the contrast between the pamphlets & educational materials and the diaries is really interesting; it shows me what was said it public, or thought to be normal/healthy/righteous and what the actual lived experience of young women and girls was.

i'm sure i'll think of more to say later but YAY GIRL SCOUTS.

(mark snow style whistling noises)

i've been rewatching the early seasons of the x-files recently and been thinking about how much of an impact--completely goofy though it is in retrospect--it had on my little developing mind, and it all comes down to scully. i can't talk trash about mulder, but frankly if i had wanted to watch a show with a strong male lead i would have had plenty of choices at the time. scully was different though, she was serious and intellectual without losing her humanity or warmth. she was brilliant and confident in her own ideas and argued against her superiors and coworkers on her own behalf; she advocated for herself and thought for herself.

PLUS she was such a style icon: that hair! those shoes! those SUITS! i loved her hair at the beginning, that kind of awful set of curls awkwardly resting on her cheekbones. oh baby scully, you were just starting out!

anyway, because of scully i wanted to go into science for a long while. at first it was medicine, but i wanted to be a forensic pathologist because i was a dedicated misanthrope at the time (thirteen or fourteen, so... yeah that explains that) and didn't want to work with people. this, by the way, is hilarious to me now.

i wanted to be an epidemiologist next (the hot zone had recently come out) and eventually moved away from the sciences, but it was fun in my second bio class to pretend i was doing experiments and reports JUST LIKE SCULLY. yes, these were heady times.

i like to think scully's example reinforced assertive behaviour for myself at the time. i think just seeing such a strong, confident woman i could aspire to be and identify with gave me a new way of seeing myself and my potential. i liked other characters (usually from something geeky, like dr. crusher or whatnot) but scully was the most fleshed out and real feeling. she also really broke the mold with her seriousness & intensity, things i wasn't comfortable about in myself but i could respect them in scully, things that are usually considered unfeminine and unlikable.

there i think i'm all thoughted out from scully. pfft.