The Secret All Women Share

“Before I started being ashamed of getting my period I was ashamed of not getting my period.”

clipped from www.nytimes.com So when it comes to the onset of menstruation, it is the rare girl who will launch an enthusiastic dialogue with family or friends on the subject. Far more typical is she who enters the feminine-products aisle alone (and returns there alone for the duration). To 18-year-old Rachel Nalebuff, this particular privacy made no sense. Reasoning that every lonely soul wandering through Walgreens has a story to tell, she was inspired to assemble a collection of 92 short reflections by women on the subject of their first period. Ms. Nalebuff’s Great Aunt Nina, for instance, got her first period on a train out of Poland at the onset of World War II, while being strip-searched by guards at the German border. Sixty years later, Ms. Nalebuff herself spent a horrific afternoon waterskiing in a stained yellow bathing suit stuffed with paper towels, in the company of her tongue-tied grandfather.