Is Lybrel a quick fix for something that's not broken to begin with? Or is it a feminist victory, a culturally (or at least pharmaceutically) sanctioned pronouncement that menstruation, like childbearing itself, isn't mandatory after all? If Lybrel had been around when Margaret was conducting her rap sessions with God, would the specter of womanhood have been a little less frightening? Would she have quit whining and taken up chess or something?

Sadly, I doubt it. As the chief spokesperson for the Original Problem, Margaret was (and is) notably complicit in the self-improvement racket. Why? Because despite its plain talk and 1970s-style earnestness, "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" is less a stepping stone to "Our Bodies, Ourselves" than the gateway drug to Cosmo and Glamour. Blume introduced millions to the idea that their bodies — and, indeed, their very femaleness — are vessels for anxiety, fear and relentless unflattering comparison. She — surely unintentionally — created legions of insatiable women's magazine consumers. Having internalized Margaret's chief lesson — that womanhood is a problem that demands no end of cures — readers can graduate to articles about wrinkles and cellulite and all the other byproducts of the Original Problem.

Of course, Lybrel doesn't erase the Original Problem so much as hide it from view. And without going into the yucky medical details, let's remember that the method is one women have been employing for decades by skipping the placebo tablets that come with traditional contraceptive pills. Whether the drug catches on (and it might not because clinical trials suggest that certain side effects, such as "unscheduled" bleeding, may obviate its benefits), what's most significant about Lybrel is the way it reverts us into our sixth-grade selves. By challenging the definition of normal, it goads us, once again, into questioning our own normalcy. And as anyone who's read Cosmo knows, no good comes from that.