Since I started this job of reviewing about a year and a half ago, I’ve had the privilege of reading a number of self-help type books geared towards girls and women and their bodies. I have to admit that none have been as comprehensive, helpful, and realistic as BODY DRAMA. This is a book that leaves nothing to the imagination, states complete truths instead of half-truths and myths, and answers the types of questions that many females, regardless of age, are sometimes
too embarrassed to ask — even in the company of their doctors. As an adult, and a married woman with two children, I still found this book to be extremely helpful, and even discovered information that I hadn’t previously known.

From your face to your skin, from your hair and nails to your reproductive organs, from skin problems to disease, from the natural shape of your body to the sometimes strange things that happen to said body, Ms. Redd covers them all — and in detail. There’s no hesitation here, and there’s definitely no embarrassment. There are only real answers to real questions that everyone, at one time or another, has wondered about. And if you haven’t wondered about it yet, believe
me, you will!

BODY DRAMA is filled with “fast facts,” drama scenarios, “how do I deal?” answers, and full-color photographs. This is a book that younger kids might giggle over, but that older teens will appreciate for its frankness. This is also a book that, once you get your copy, you won’t want to part with it. Share it with your daughter, your sister, your cousin, your friend. Don’t be ashamed of the body you were born with. Get the answers you need to be healthy and happy.

Kudos to Ms. Redd for such an informative read. This one is a winner!

by Jennifer Wardrip

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YPulse.com
By Alli Decker

Body Drama Has Balls

I just received a great book from author Nancy Redd, called Body Drama. The cover reads, “Real Girls, Real Bodies, Real Issues, Real Answers” and as far as I can tell it covers everything and is definitely, well… real. At first, I was a little shocked to see the entire page of vaginas and to read a page dedicated solely to slang for breasts but I got over it. This generation of young girls has been raised in an especially casual, sexualized world and anything short of down and dirty would get tossed in the trash. Redd delivers a lot of great information for girls about what it’s like to live in their female bodies, and how to inhabit it with pride and care.

When I first got Body Drama I called my sister. She’s a school nurse and all-around girl power, rock-star and I wanted her to know about it. We both agreed it’s a must-have for school health offices. We also talked about how we hadn’t really seen a lot naked women growing up. (There’s a sentence you don’t write everyday.) My parents weren’t the walk-around-house-naked types. HBO got turned off when they went out, and there were no Playboys lying around. I think all of that’s good, of course, but at the same time, I had no other positive point of reference. When it comes to our bodies, as young women, we really need to feel safe and normal. I believe that comes from exposure to what real human beings look like… feeling safe and normal.
Here’s a great article at Healthline.com I agree with this writer: this is just the kind of book you want lying around for your daughter to just happen upon. She may giggle her way through it with her friends but she’ll get the message, and it’s an important one: We all have bodies, embrace yours.

I recently interviewed Nancy Redd about Body Drama and, by the way, she seems to be the real deal too.

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New York Magazine
by Tim Murphy

Nancy Redd Sees Vulvas Everywhere

Growing up, Nancy Redd had a poor relationship with that part of her body that rhymes with Mulva, as Seinfeld famously noted. “I grew up in southern Virginia, where you’re lucky if it’s referred to as a hoo-ha,” said Redd, 26. Then she majored in women’s studies at Harvard, won Miss Virginia 2003 and placed in the top ten at Miss America 2004. With a postfeminist résumé like that, it was probably inevitable that she would write Body Drama, a version of Our Bodies, Ourselves for the self-image-addled teen girls and young women of Generation Z, coming out December 27. Covering everything from woes about lopsided boobs and personal smells to serious health issues, it’s full of un-retouched photos of buck-naked everyday women, all New Yorkers whom Redd found over Craigslist — including a centerfold of 24 vulvas that gives new meaning to the term “full spread.” Redd recounted that shoot to Tim Murphy.

So what did the Craigslist ad say?
It said, “Come show your vagina for a good cause.” We ended up shooting about 50. We wanted a variety of colors and shapes, hair and without hair. We concocted this table in a photo studio like you’d have at the gyno — a clean, sterile table with disposable paper. I paid $50 a vulva.

What kinds of women showed up?
There were artists and bankers and a lot of students. Women who wanted to share themselves with the world. I wanted it to be fun vaginas, a happy and wholesome project. We had a pizza area where people watched TV. One woman said, “I can’t wait for the book to come out. I’m going to make my boyfriend pick mine out.”

Who has actually seen this many vulvas? Lesbians and men who get a lot of play?
Men don’t look. When they saw [the vulvas in the book], they said, “I’ve never seen anything that looks like that.” They’re so used to their little airbrushed Playboy vulvas. They don’t understand that they’ve got makeup and glycerin down there in porn. When guys have sex, they’re not even paying attention to the real deal.

How do women relate to their vulvas?
You’d be surprised about the shame they feel. They say it’s too dark, it’s too deep, it’s too hairy, it’s not feminine — which is the most ironic. How can your vulva not be feminine?

How did your editor feel about the vulva spread?
It was preapproved in the contract, but when she saw it, she said, “Oh, wow, when you said ‘vulva,’ I thought you meant the front — the muff.” That’s the whole point. Anyone can see a muff. It’s not that interesting.

Um — did you take part in the spread?
I did. I couldn’t recognize myself in the photo, though. I was, like, “Oh, really?”

The book has a bit of an anti-waxing slant, don’t you think?
I don’t care what you end up doing as long as it’s for you first and foremost. If you’re waxing because your boyfriend won’t have sex with you otherwise, you need to think about that.

Do you think the shoot would’ve gone differently if you’d done it in L.A.?
Absolutely. They’re way more manicured. People are more real in New York. I had Indian, Hispanic, Asian, white, and black women who were all so full of spirit. New York is a city of dreams.

How has your family reacted?
My mom — for the first year she thought I was creating porn. She said, “At least I can tell the pastor the title.”

If you stare at the vulva spread, it takes on a beautiful, abstract-art quality.
If you ever go into a Cheesecake Factory, their lampposts are totally vaginal, too. Now I see vulvas everywhere.

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Body Drama; Real Girls, Real Bodies, Real Issues, Real Answers is a new book by Nancy Amanda Redd that should be on the shelf of every family, school, and doctor in America. This book provides pictures, knowledge and encouragement to young women everywhere to help them avoid feeling insecure, ugly or imperfect when faced with the air-brushed women the media bombards them with. This book covers it all - from body hair, bras, acne, weight issues, stinkies, bumpies, and even vaginal discharge!

I admit, when I agreed to review this book I assumed I would skim it, but I have to tell you that I read every single word, laughed, groaned, and even learned a thing or two (like what a queef is). This book is packed with very funny bad jokes, health information, body care tips and most importantly, full color photos of real women’s bodies described using real-world language. This is maybe the most important aspect of the book - real words to describe real bodies - that you get to see. These bodies help people understand that their bodies are normal. There is even a page of vulvas - yep, real ones!

Everywhere in this book is the message that you are perfect and anyone who loves you, should think you look perfect! If you change your body it must be because you want to and nobody has the right to try and make you feel bad! We all stink sometimes, get zits, and 85% of women have cellulite - so relax and love living!

I tried to get my 12-year old and her friends to offer some quotes about this book, but they blushed and said “Mom, we are too young,” but I will leave it on the shelf in my room though, where she knows she can find it and look through it in private. That said, I guess I better buy a copy to leave in my office, too! My 15-year old however, promises to read it during Christmas break and will publish her own review.

Nancy Amanda Redd has a Harvard degree with honors in women’s studies and was Miss Virginia. Her goal is writing this book seems to have been to help young women understand “normal” covers a very wide reality and differs for every shape, ethnicity, and size. This amazing book will hit the bookstores at the end of the month, but you can order your copy now at Amazon.com for only $13.60.

There is not enough I can say about this book! Thank you Nancy Redd!

by Nancy Brown, PhD, professor of Adolescent Sexuality at Stanford University, senior research associate at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) Research Institute.

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Answering questions girls are embarrassed to ask

A few weeks ago, after I wrote a post about Tyra Banks’ show featuring a vulva puppet, I received an e-mail from a woman named Nancy Redd. She was happy to have seen the post, she said, but also wanted to let me know that there would soon be less of a need for vulva puppets because she was about to come out with a book called “Body Drama” that, as she put it, featured photos of “boobs, vaginas, and everything in between.” Lest that sound weird, I should point out that “Body Drama” is a “photographic body, health and self-esteem book for young women.” Redd, who’s a 26-year-old Harvard graduate and former Miss Virginia, wanted to write a book that would help teenage girls find answers to the questions they had about their own bodies (e.g., Why do I sweat so much? Why is one breast bigger than the other? My vagina smells — what’s going on?) — not to mention provide photographs of real (as opposed to airbrushed) photographs of female bodies — and provide some solid health advice. Because, as Redd herself puts it in the book’s introduction, “our educational system spends millions of dollars creating detailed health programs, but those programs skip over the basic ABCs of basic body smarts. We’ve been so focused (and understandably so) on sexual education that we’ve completely ignored body education … How can we respect and protect our bodies if we don’t know what real bodies look like? If we can hardly utter the word vagina, much less peek at it without feeling dirty, how can we own and love it and ourselves?”
I don’t know about you all, but when I hit puberty and my mom slipped me a copy of “What’s Happening to My Body? Book for Girls,” I was so fascinated that I read it cover to cover, but was so embarrassed by the entire concept of puberty that I slipped it inside a magazine so that my parents couldn’t see what I was looking at. (I’m not kidding — I treated it as if it were porn.) I would have loved to have a book, written by someone who presumably is completely confident about her own body (she won the swimsuit competition, after all), that addressed all the questions I had about my changing body.
“Body Drama” isn’t coming out till Dec. 27, but if you’re holiday shopping, you can still preorder it. If I had a young teenage girl in my life, this would be at the top of my list of gifts for her — especially if her copy of Cricket magazine had suddenly developed a mysterious bulge.

by Catherine Price of Broadsheet

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