“What’s Up Down There?” is a book written by Lissa Rankin and published by St. Martin’s Griffin. The book’s tagline is “Questions You’d Only Ask your Gynecologist if She Was Your Best Friend”. The book is a softcover book that is 381 pages long. The book is black and white text on the inside, and there are no illustrations or pictures on the inside. The book, for being about 400 pages long, is made from a light-weight paper, so the book is surprisingly light. The book could be read in public as long as you are okay with others knowing you’re reading a book about your vagina.
This book is intended to be like a “guide to your female-ness”. The book focuses on different aspects about the female body that common guides don’t usually answer. Lissa Rankin is a gynecologist, and she says she receives tons of off-the-wall questions from her best friends. This made her realize that there isn’t nearly enough information out there about the female body, so she ended up writing up this book to answer some uncommon questions about the female body.
This book is written in a question and answer type of format. The author poses a question to us then answers it. This makes it really easy to skip over content that doesn’t seem interesting to you. The questions are all questions that Lissa Rankin says she’s received from women in the past, so she’s really making this book just to answer some of the questions that we all have about our bodies but are just too embarrassed to ask.
The book is actually really enjoyable to read. I never once felt bored. Not in all of the 381 pages. Lissa is an amazing writer on that end since I normally get a bit bored with most of the non-fiction books I read. The author throws in quite a bit of humor and flavors it with some of her own personal tales of patients she’s seen at her clinic. Mixed in with the humor that she naturally presents, you actually are pretty drawn into the book, and reading the book ends up feeling like a pleasure instead of a chore.
The book taught me a lot of different things. For example, did you know that a woman’s vagina’s natural pH level is a 4? That male sperm swim about 5mm a minute? It’s not all obscure facts either. I learned that the uterus can actually fall out, and I learned exactly what delivering a child can do to your body. Lissa does a great job of answering a lot of questions I’d thought about, and it really is like “The Owners Manual to your Vagina”. It includes all of those questions that no one ever talks to us about.
One section I was a bit annoyed by was the anal sex section. As someone who considers themselves pretty educated when it comes to sex, it was disappointing to see Lissa mention that, while some women do enjoy anal sex, she says there’s no reason they should. She mentions all the downsides of anal sex without ever mentioning that there are pleasurable nerve endings that can make anal sex pleasurable. She does, however, give a good guide to exploring anal sex for those who want to try exploring it. This was really the only section of the book that I found myself disagreeing with her on anything.
The book does end up covering a nice, wide variety of topics though. She starts off talking about her experience as a gynecologist and some of her more entertaining stories. After that, it segways into different chapters. Each chapter will talk about a different aspect of being a female. The chapters are:
How Coochies Look, How Coochies Smell and Taste, Sex and Masturbation, Orgasm, Discharge and Itching, Periods, Fertility, Pregnancy, Childbirth, Menopause, Boobs, Pee, Butts, You and Yoni: The Relationship.
The book ends up covering a lot of ground. I’m impressed. There’s so much to learn in this book that I never would have even guessed about. If there ever such as thing as having an instruction guide to your vagina, Lissa Rankin does a great job with writing the book. Seriously. This book ends up being a must-read – especially for women who want to know more about their bodies. “What’s Up Down There?” ends up being a fun AND educational book – something that’s really hard to find in the same book.
