Woman: An Intimate Geography

Natural History, July, 1999 by Meredith F. Small

WOMAN: AN INTIMATE GEOGRAPHY, by Natalie Angier. Houghton Mifflin; $25; 432pp.

Drawing on the latest scientific findings, Natalie Angier surveys the politically charged field of female biology. The result is a well-balanced, entertaining, and unfailingly provocative book.

In Woman: An Intimate Geography, journalist Natalie Angier provides a road map of female biology. Full of revelatory personal anecdotes and wry humor, Angler's book focuses on biological markers of females of the species (menstruation, birth, breasts, estrogen, menopause) and touches as well on cross-gender topics, such as orgasm, aggression, strength, and mate choice.

The coverage is extensive and balanced. Take, for example, Margie Profet's well-publicized hypothesis that menstruation evolved because it had an adaptive value in carrying bacteria out of the female reproductive tract. Angler gives equal time to the less known work of Beverly Strassmann, who has pointed out that in populations using no artificial birth control, women rarely menstruate, because they are usually pregnant or lactating. These women--and also presumably our ancestors--could not have benefited from the hypothesized route of protection. Instead, Strassmann argues, the monthly sloughing off of the uterine lining after ovulation may simply have evolved to conserve calories--that is, it is energetically cheaper to menstruate than to maintain a thick uterine wall when no pregnancy has occurred.

More often than not, Angler jumps into the fray--and this is what adds spice to the mix of ideas. In the chapter about the clitoris ("The Well-Tempered Clavier"), she accurately describes two opposing views about the evolution of the clitoral climax. Some believe the clitoris is simply a vestigial penis--like nipples on a man, the faint, atavistic "signature of what might have been but no longer really needs to be." Others maintain that the clitoris developed specifically to encourage women to have sex. The female orgasm, the latter group proposes, evolved to urge women to mate with several males and thereby confuse paternity so that babies might receive care from several fathers or be protected from infanticide. But Angier suggests a third possibility: that the clitoris (and the female orgasm) is the ultimate expression of female choice, an adaptation "designed to en courage its bearer to take control of her sexuality.... In truth, the clitoris operates at peak performance when a woman feels a thunder with life and strength." Even if the reader doesn't agree, her argument is compelling.

Angier does a fine job describing basic biological systems--the body's abundant hormones, for example. She follows such hormones as estrogen and testosterone from the organs of their production to their target tissues and nicely explains what they do (and do not do). Testosterone does not make one aggressive, and estrogen does not make one female, but both are implicated in sexuality and sex roles. While she cautions against overestimating the power of hormones, Angier clearly admires their ability to "ramrod their way through from blood into tissue, or slip in between the cracks, leaving us agog once more at how potent, how exquisite, and how crude these chemical emissaries can be."

Combining evolutionary, medical, historical, and cross-cultural perspectives, Angier provides a multifaceted view that can have practical applications. In her presentation of menopause, for example, she makes the case for and against hormone replacement therapy. Such therapy is good for women at risk for heart disease and bone loss, but the medication also comes with the risk of various cancers. She also cites intriguing research on hunter-gatherers that suggests menopause is a natural state, allowing women to contribute to the lives of their grandchildren, and brings up evidence showing that menopausal symptoms vary from culture to culture. In countries where the diet is high in phytoestrogens (found in such plants as soybeans and yams), women don't have many of the "normal" physical responses--such as hot flashes--and may not face the same cancer risks that women face elsewhere.

Angier celebrates the female, telling the reader that this book is "about rapture, a rapture grounded firmly in the flesh, the beauties of the body." But the intended audience is not just women. Men, too, can learn about their female relatives, lovers, and friends. And young women, who are notorious for relinquishing their self-esteem at adolescence as they watch their bodies change, need this book most of all. "Learn to play the drums," writes Angier. "The world needs more girl drummers. The world needs your wild, pounding, drumming heart." That's why I'll be giving a copy of Woman to my eighteen-year-old niece as well as to my female friends turning fifty.

Meredith F. Small is a writer and a professor of anthropology at Cornell University. She writes frequently for Natural History, and her latest book is Our Babies, Ourselves (Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1999).