‘Caring for Yourself’ Millennium Milestone Turns 25: NPR

The cover of THE Take care of you and keep you: The body book for girlsoriginally published in 1998.

American girl

hide caption

toggle caption

American girl

The cover of THE Take care of you and keep you: The body book for girlsoriginally published in 1998.

American girl

This month marks the 25th anniversary of The care and custody of you – a book that soothed the teenage angst of a generation of girls, including myself. The book, which sought to demystify puberty, sold millions of copies and hit the market. New York Times bestseller list as recently as 2016.

For my friend Kaela Seiersen, however, the book was contraband. She says a family friend lent her family the book when she was a child. Her mother wasn’t sure her home-schooled 8-year-old was ready to read such a simple book about changes in girls’ bodies, so she pulled it. But not very far.

“The book would appear on my refrigerator, so I would stand in the chair and try to read it,” Seiersen says. “It was really difficult because my parents were there all the time and the refrigerator was also really high. So even when I stood on a chair, I couldn’t grab it.”

Seiersen says that at first she was most fascinated by the strange new information in the book. She remembers seeing illustrations of the different stages of breast development and thinking, “I’ll never look like that, I’ll never be an adult.” »

But when she got a little older, Seiersen began using the book to answer questions she didn’t feel comfortable asking her parents.

Valorie Schaefer’s daughter was born in 1998, the same year the book was published.

Valorie Schaefer

hide caption

toggle caption

Valorie Schaefer

Valorie Schaefer’s daughter was born in 1998, the same year the book was published.

Valorie Schaefer

The author of the book, Valorie Schaefer, worked for American girl magazine before writing The care and custody of you. She says the magazine received a lot of letters from girls who had a lot of questions they didn’t want to ask their parents.

“Just these heartbreaking letters, but also such sweet letters,” Schaefer recalls. “When will I get my period, what about these spots, why do I feel so emotional all the time?”

Schaefer had a lot of empathy for these girls. Growing up in the 1960s, she says she had even fewer resources to fend for herself.

“You would get a box of tampons and it had a huge set of fold-out instructions, like a road map for putting a tampon in,” she recalls.

So Schaefer decided to write less intimidating instructions with a nervous young audience in mind. It included another friend of mine, Abby Eskinder Hailu, who will never forget the diagram in the book for how to put in a tampon.

“He would tell you to angle the tampon toward your back,” she says. “I remember thinking about it when I first started using tampons, like, wow, this is really helpful.”

“No matter what stage of life you’re at, sometimes it’s really helpful to have a voice somewhere telling you that you have this, that you’re normal,” says Schaefer.

Take care of you and keep you author Valorie Lee Schaefer

Richard Bock/Valorie Schäfer

hide caption

toggle caption

Richard Bock/Valorie Schäfer

Take care of you and keep you author Valorie Lee Schaefer

Richard Bock/Valorie Schäfer

And like the first generation readers of The care and custody of you get older, they have a new demand for Schaefer. “Most often what people ask for is a book about perimenopause,” she says.

It sometimes even turns out that Really big kids just want a thoughtful, accurate book that explains their ever-changing bodies.