(^30) – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 everythingzoomer.com
MONG THE THINGS
Dr. Jen Gunter wants
you to know is that
your vagina, if you
have one, is most
likely just dandy
as it is, thank you very much (“It’s
self-cleaning”) and that “meno-
pause is nothing to be afraid of. We
didn’t have estrogen as children
and we were perfectly fine. It’s just
puberty in reverse.”
The San Francisco-based ob-
stetrician-gynecologist from
Winnipeg, above, got her MD de-
gree at the University of Manitoba
and did her ob-gyn training at the
University of Western Ontario.
But her notoriety came when she
openly took an opposing view to
Gwyneth Paltrow and
the celebrity’s life-
style website, Goop.
When advice popped
up about inserting
jade into the vagina
to get rid of nega-
tive energy, Gunter
couldn’t stay quiet.
“It doesn’t bother
me how people know
me,” she says. “And
I’m completely un-
bothered by Goop and Paltrow.
What bothers me is celebrities
grifting off of their genetic priv-
ilege. And doctors and medic-
al students promoting medical
products.”
After almost 30 years in prac-
tice, Gunter’s become a media
sensation in her own right, with
more than 182,000 Twitter follow-
ers (and almost as many tweets),
an active blog, columns in the
New York Times, a podcast in the
works, a just-published second
book, The Vagina Bible (her first,
The Preemie Primer, is a guide for
parents of babies born premature-
ly), and a contract for another
book, The Menopause Manifesto.
And her CBC show Jensplaining
begins streaming Aug. 23 with 10
episodes. “Menopause, periods,
puberty, vaccines, vaginas, beauty
- I want people to have factual
information.”
“The people most diminished
in our society are menopausal
women,” she says. Gunter, 53, says
she experienced horrible hot flash-
es during menopause and has a
family history of osteoporosis. She
takes estrogen but says it should
be an individual decision, with
each woman weighing the risks
and benefits. “We should be given
the information and then make
choices that work for us.” And that
applies to everything concerning
women’s bodies.
Gunter wrote the fact-based, sci-
entifically informed but also
Zoom In Vitality
THE
FEMINIST
MYSTIQUE
What exactly is going on down there?
A new book takes an intensively science-
based yet readable approach to women’s
reproductive health By Judy Gerstel