Lifestyle
Norma Swenson, ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ Co-Author, Dies at 93
Norma Swenson was working to educate women about childbirth, championing their right to have a say about how they delivered their babies, when she met the members of the collective that had put out the first rough version of what would become the feminist health classic “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” It was around 1970, and she recalled a few of the women attending a meeting she was holding in Newton, Mass., where she lived.
It did not go well. One of them shouted at her, “You are not a feminist, you’ll never be a feminist and you need to go to school!”
“I was stricken,” Ms. Swenson remembered in a StoryCorps interview in 2018. “But also feeling that maybe she was right. I needed to know more things.”
She did, however, know quite a bit about the medical establishment, the paternalistic and condescending behavior of male doctors — in 1960, only 6 percent of incoming medical students were female — and the harmful effect that behavior had on women’s health. She had lived it, during the birth of her daughter in 1958.
Despite the initial tension — the woman who had berated Ms. Swenson felt her activism was too polite, too old-school — the members of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, as they called themselves, invited Ms. Swenson to join their group. She would go on to help make “Our Bodies, Ourselves” a global best seller. It was a relationship that lasted for the next half-century.
Ms. Swenson died on May 11 at her home in Newton. She was 93.
The cause was cancer, her daughter, Sarah Swenson, said.
It was during a women’s liberation conference in Boston in 1969 that a small group began sharing stories of their fraught experiences with doctors. They told of their frustration with the sexism of the medical establishment and of how confounded they were by the lack of knowledge they had about their own bodies. So they set out to learn for themselves, and in so doing they began to assemble a candid and humane encyclopedia of women’s health — by women, for women.
In 1970, the New England Free Press published their first rough version. It was an immediate underground success, with some 225,000 copies eventually sold. The publisher couldn’t keep up with the demand.
Ms. Swenson joined the group in 1971, when commercial publishers were courting the group’s members. After Simon & Schuster published the book in 1973, much gussied up and expanded, it became a juggernaut.
It covered topics that were then considered unmentionable and, in the case of abortion, illegal: sexuality, masturbation, abortion and birth control. There were chapters on body image, rape and self-defense; on heterosexual and lesbian relationships; on childbirth and its aftermath; and, in later editions, on menopause. There were detailed illustrations — including six variations of hymens — and photographs, including a helpful how-to for viewing one’s own vagina with a mirror.
When The New York Times’s chief book critic, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt — a man! — reviewed it, he explained his rationale for giving himself the assignment.
“I learned a great deal from this book that I did not know before, or had somehow forgotten,” he wrote. “And if the authors are correct in their belief that one of the major reasons why men oppress women is because ‘of the male fear and envy of the generative and sexual powers of women’ — and I think they are — why, then, it will do no harm at all for men to read ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ and expend a little rational thought on these powers.”
The book revolutionized how women’s health was discussed, and it quickly became a cultural touchstone. Reading it — often under the covers — was a rite of passage for many young women, who nicked it from their mothers’ bedside tables. More progressive moms gave it to their daughters in lieu of “the talk.”
Barbara Ehrenreich called it a manifesto of medical populism. The Moral Majority deemed it obscene. It even had a cameo in “Heartburn,” Nora Ephron’s 1983 revenge novel about the breakup of her marriage.
But the book was always a labor of love. And as the royalties poured in, the Obos, as they called themselves, used the money not to pay themselves but to create a nonprofit that made small grants to women’s health groups.
In 1977, Ms. Swenson and Judy Norsigian, another core member of the collective, teamed up for a tour of 10 European countries to meet with women’s groups who were putting together their own versions of “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” Ms. Swenson would later help to oversee the international editions and adaptations, and would lecture around the world, particularly in developing countries.
“Norma was always committed to an intersectional approach,” Ms. Norsigian said. “She made sure the activism could fit people’s lifestyles. How they could do things with limited resources. How to tailor the work to specific communities in less industrialized countries. She helped breastfeeding support groups in the Philippines, for example, and met with a doctor in Bangladesh who was advocating for indigenous production of essential drugs.”
“Feminism,” Ms. Swenson once told a group of doctors, “is just another name for self-respect.”
Norma Lucille Meras was born on Feb. 2, 1932, in Exeter, N.H., the only child of Halford Meras, who owned the town’s furniture store, and Nellie (Kenick) Meras, who worked as the store’s bookkeeper.
When she was 9, the family moved to Boston. She attended the prestigious Girls’ Latin School (now Boston Latin Academy), graduating in 1949 and studied sociology at Tufts University. She graduated in 1953 and, three years later, married John Swenson, a decorated World War II pilot — he was a member of the 100th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, also known as the Bloody Hundredth — who worked in insurance and for the Post Office.
It was her daughter’s birth that had made Ms. Swenson an activist. She wanted to deliver the baby naturally, without medication. Her decision was such an anomaly that residents at the Boston Lying-In Hospital gathered to watch her labor. It went swimmingly.
But Ms. Swenson, who was in a 12-bed ward, was surrounded by women who were suffering. They were giving birth according to the practices of the era: with a dose of Scopolamine, a drug that induced so-called twilight sleep and hallucinations, followed by a shot of Demerol, an opioid.
She remembered the women screaming, trying to climb out of their beds, calling for their mothers and cursing their husbands before being knocked out by the Demerol, their babies delivered by forceps.
It was barbaric, she thought. “These women weren’t being helped,” she said in 2018, “they were being controlled.”
She became president of the Boston Association for Childbirth Education, which focused on natural childbirth, in 1964, and later served as president of the International Childbirth Education Association. She earned a master’s degree in public health from Harvard in 1973.
Mr. Swenson died in 2002. Ms. Swenson’s partner for the next decade and a half, Leonard van Gaasbeek, died in 2019. Her daughter is her only immediate survivor.
For most of her life, Ms. Swenson traveled the world as an expert on reproductive rights and women’s and children’s health, advising women’s health groups and helping to connect them with policy and grant makers. She taught at the Harvard School of Public Health and served as a consultant to the World Health Organization and other groups.
“Our Bodies, Ourselves,” last updated in 2011, has sold more than four million copies and been translated into 34 languages. The nonprofit behind the book, which provides health resources to women, is now based at Suffolk University in Boston.
“It’s not that things have so dramatically improved for women,” Ms. Swenson told The Times in 1985. “But they’d be much worse if it were not for the pressure of the women’s health movement. We are a presence now that cannot be made to disappear.”
She continued: “Women’s voices are being heard, speaking about their needs and their experiences, and they are not going along with having decisions based simply on what the medical profession needs or what the drug industry needs. I find that enormously exciting.”
Phil Pritchard of the Hockey Hall of Fame works the 2019 NHL Awards at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on June 19, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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Peter talks to Phil Pritchard, the NHL’s Keeper of the Stanley Cup. Phil plays our game called, “Let’s Go Visit The NHL” Three questions about National Historic Landmarks.
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Paul W. Downs can’t help it that even on the weekends, his life intersects with “Hacks,” the HBO comedy he co-created and co-showruns with his wife, Lucia Aniello, and their friend Jen Statsky. (He also appears on the show as Jimmy LuSaque Jr., the besieged manager of its two stars, played by Emmy winners Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder.) The fifth and final season of “Hacks” premiered last week, but on Downs’ days off, he often finds himself at its previous filming locations or hanging out with cast members who have become like family.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Downs moved to Los Angeles in 2011, but soon after, he and Aniello were hired to write (and for him to act) on the über-New York show “Broad City,” keeping them away from the West Coast for years. Now the couple live in Los Feliz, which they enjoy with their young son.
“I love Los Feliz because it’s a real neighborhood with restaurants and bars, but also feels close to nature with Griffith Park,” Downs says. “Also it’s very central to my Eastside friends and Westside agents.”
And if he had to live at a local mall, like the character Ava Daniels did in the third season of “Hacks,” which would he choose?
“It would be the Americana, obviously.”
Here’s how he’d spend a perfect day in L.A.
10 a.m.: A late rise and a li’l barista
I’m sleeping in if I can, which I can’t because I have a toddler, but let’s say I can sleep ’til 10. That would be insane.
Then I’m making coffee at home. I’m making it with my 4-year-old because he likes to make my coffee now. He always wanted to help, now he really wants to do it on his own. I’m still there to supervise, but he does do a lot of it.
I do batch brew. I’m doing Verve Coffee that I’m grinding there, and then I’m brewing four cups because I need my coffee. I had a Moccamaster for a long time, but I recently got a Simply Good Coffee. There’s no plastic — it’s all glass and metal.
11 a.m.: Chocolate croissants for everyone
We’re driving to Pasadena and we’re going to [Artisanal Goods by] CAR, which is the place to get the best chocolate croissant, I think, in the world. I don’t just think in L.A., I think they’re better than Paris. I’m going there with my wife and my kid and I’m having another coffee and some pastry. We’re ordering three [chocolate croissants]. We’re not doubling up.
11:45 a.m.: The family business
We’re driving to Fair Oaks in Pasadena. There’s a place called T.L. Gurley. We shot “Hacks” there, actually. Not only in Season 1, but also full circle in Season 5. We’re going to shmay around and look at antiques. My kid is going to want to play a vintage pinball machine. We’re going to find a little piece of art for the house or what have you. It’s not necessarily that I’m on the hunt. It’s to pass the time and to have some fun. If I could do anything and have a leisurely day and take my mind off work, that’s what I’m doing.
People love to interact with my kid when he’s there. We’re really training him to appraise things at a young age. My parents are part-time dealers of antiques. My grandmother bought and sold antiques. It’s kind of a family business.
1:30 pm.: Baguettes and books
We’re driving to Larchmont and we’re getting a sandwich at Larchmont Village Wine, Spirits & Cheese. I’m doing prosciutto-mozzarella-basil on a baguette.
Then we’re going to Chevalier’s Books. What’s sad is that I’m often not looking for leisure material. I’m looking for something that I’m interested in learning more about or writing about, or that they’re turning into a show I want to audition for. But we’re also doing Little Golden Books for my son. He’s obsessed. We’re not huge on screen time, so we really encourage the book-buying.
2:30 p.m.: Cast pool party
We’re having some family fun in the pool and we’re doing that until evening. We invite people over all the time. My sister-in-law is a New Yorker, but she actually wrote last season on “The Rooster” and she’s often writing on shows in L.A., so she’s often here and she’ll have a couple friends come over. I know this sounds like a piece of PR or something, but we’ll really literally have Hannah [Einbinder] and maybe Mark Indelicato from “Hacks” come over to swim. Jen, our co-creator of “Hacks,” will come over.
6:00 p.m.: Family dinner
Sometimes we’ll order Grá to the house, which is a pizza place in Echo Park — excellent sourdough crust pizza. But if we don’t do that, an ideal evening is an early dinner at All Time on Hillhurst in Los Feliz. We’re ordering the ceviche and my son is having all of it and not sharing with anybody at the table.
8:45 p.m.: A thrilling ending to the day
After putting my kid to bed, my wife and I, in an ideal world (full disclosure: we haven’t done this in two years), we’ll watch something together that we’ve been meaning to watch. We have a long list of movies and we either want to revisit or that we haven’t seen that we need to watch.
We don’t watch a lot of comedies. It’s a dream to watch a “Black Bag” or a little espionage thriller. We really like that because it’s so different than the stuff that we’re working on in the day.
Often the things we watch are things that we admire. We like deconstructing it as fans of film and television. We do like talking about the making of it, but it’s less of a critique and more of a listing of the things we appreciated about it.
10:30 p.m.: No work tomorrow
And then it’s lovemaking ’til morning on a perfect Sunday. If it’s a perfect Sunday, there’s also a Monday that’s off.
Jay (not pictured) found himself alone and hopeless in a jail cell when a fellow inmate’s unexpected words of comfort changed his life.
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When Jay was 22 years old, he was a self-described loner. In this story, he is being identified by his nickname to allow himself to speak candidly about the following experience and his mental health. He says the few people he did hang out with at the time had questionable morals.
”I chose my friends poorly, and your friends have a tendency to rub off on you. And so I started making poor decisions,” Jay said.
One evening, when he and his friends were out drinking, someone suggested they should try to break into the chemistry building on his college campus. Most of the group shrugged the suggestion off, deeming it impossible, but Jay was convinced he could pull it off.
“The next night I made a plan of how to do it, and I did it,” Jay remembered. “And I didn’t get caught doing it, [but] I got caught afterwards.”
At around 1 that morning, Jay was placed in the county detention center. Sitting alone in his cell, reality began to sink in.
“I pretty much thought that my life as I knew it was going to be over, and I had decided that the world would be better off without me in it.”
Jay made a plan to end his life. As he prepared himself, he began to cry.
“But just in that moment when I was ready to do it, I heard a voice coming from the top left corner of my cell, from a little vent. And someone called out to me and said, ‘Hey, is this your first time?’”
The man who called out was an inmate in the cell next door.
“I collected myself a little bit, and I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Can I pray for you?’”
Jay had grown up religious, but had stopped going to church years before. In that moment, though, he knew he needed support. He said yes, and listened as the man began to pray.
“I wish I could tell you that I remember the [exact] words that he said to me, but what I remember is that his words landed with me, and instead of wanting my life to be over, suddenly I saw hope,” Jay said.
The interaction happened nearly ten years ago, but it was a pivotal moment in Jay’s life, and one he thinks about all the time.
“[Now], I have a good job. I have a girlfriend who loves me. I have a life. But I have a life because somebody who was in the same situation I was in had the courage to talk to a fellow inmate and be kind.”
Jay says that he wishes he could meet that man again and express his appreciation.
“[I would] shake that guy’s hand, give him a hug, and tell him what his small gesture meant for me, how he changed the course of my life.”
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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