RutlandHerald.com - We Are Vermont

'Our Bodies, Ourselves' authors to speak

In 1969, during the heyday of political and social change in the United States, 12 women struck up an acquaintance at a conference on women's health in Boston. A year later the group published the groundbreaking book, "Women and Their Bodies," which evolved into the bestselling "Our Bodies, Ourselves."

Jane Pincus of Roxbury, Vt., one of the co-authors of the book and co-founder of the group that grew out of that first publication, the Boston Women's Health Book Collective (now known as Our Bodies, Ourselves), said she had her two-month-old son with her in that conference room back in 1969.

Women outside the windows were shouting, "Down with nuclear families!" while women inside nursed their babies, she said.

"People felt change was possible … that it was possible to alter the systems in place," Pincus said. "You could tell someone about (your experiences as a woman) and someone would respond with an experience of their own that was like it. … It connected women, essentially, in a really important way."

The group met often to discuss women's health issues, and after repeatedly mimeographing informational sheets they said to each other, "Why not make a book?" explained Judy Norsigian, executive director of OBOS, who joined the collective in 1971.

Both Pincus and Norsigian will be at Kellogg-Hubbard Library on Wednesday to speak about "Our Bodies, Ourselves." Pincus will discuss the evolution of the book and Norsigian will give an update on political issues and women's health education 35 years after the publication of the first edition of "Our Bodies, Ourselves."

Norsigian explained the politics of the women's health movement in the early 1970s.

"It was not political in the sense of electoral politics," she said, but rather, "… in the sense of thinking about creating new social norms and social structures."

The book was a global phenomenon, she said. "We really were a key element in the whole women's health movement, globally as well as nationally."

Pincus, who was involved in the writing and editing of all eight editions of "Our Bodies, Ourselves," including the latest edition published in 2005, said the translations and adaptations of the book for women all over the world has been one of the most exciting recent developments for the collective.

More than 20 translations and adaptations of the book are in the works, she said, for countries including Tibet, Egypt, Israel and China. The collective has been working with women's health groups in those countries to produce the books.

"The women who are doing this are, in a way, discovering the fact that they need basic health information in the way that we did when we started out in the 1970s," she said.

Both Norsigian and Pincus are emphatic that women's health is still an important political issue.

"It never stopped being a political issue," said Pincus. "Medical control of women's bodies, the abridgement of women's rights, the pharmaceutical/industrial complex … all of those issues are still alive today."

Norsigian said her talk in Vermont will cover such topics as direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs, breast implants and cosmetic surgery, the risk to women's health of multiple egg extraction and the important distinctions between embryo cloning research and other research involving conventional embryo stem cells.

Norsigian said one of the collective's main concerns is the amount of misinformation available. Though health information has improved, she said, much of it is commercial, not educational, and sorting through it can be difficult.

"I think technology has vastly altered people's lives," Norsigian said. "The Internet, the way in which more and more young people are plugged in electronically. I think we're only beginning to start measuring the way this phenomenon has changed the way we relate to each other."

But sifting through the glut of information to discover what is accurate is difficult no matter what the topic, she said. "You can have a mind swimming with the stuff."

Pincus agrees that women now face more information than ever before. "There's almost too much information," she said. "So one of the things that I think we need to do is … convince (women) that they have to remain skeptical."

"Many women know a lot more than they used to know," she said. "On the other hand, I think women are still in the position of being brainwashed by beauty myths. The botox ads, the do-yourself-over TV shows." There's more information, "but I wonder if women are really feeling as powerful as they could be," Pincus said.

She hopes a younger generation of women will bring politics and passion to the collective. "The idea in our group was to 'pass on the torch' to younger women who would take up the struggle," she explained, noting that the original members of the organization are now in their 60s. But Pincus fears that women are more cautious now.

"When we first wrote the book it was us writing clearly, strongly, honestly, frankly," she said, adding that the writers weren't afraid of how they might be perceived. "We need to have a lot more outspokenness and a lot more courage," she said.

Norsigian, who said she's given talks at about 40 campuses in 22 states in the last year, said the collective also struggles for funding. Unlike other health organizations, the collective doesn't accept funding from pharmaceutical companies because of conflict of interest concerns.

"We're really, at this point, trying to figure out how to create a sustainable model," she said. "We are dependent upon foundation income … and individual donations." She also noted that the organization will publish two more books in the coming year. One on menopause comes out in October and the other, on pregnancy and childbirth, has a 2007 publication date.

Pincus and Norsigian will speak at Kellogg-Hubbard Library on Wednesday at 7 p.m. as part of the First Wednesdays series co-sponsored by Vermont Humanities Council.