DETROIT, MI—God forbid a 12-year-old girl should read about a vagina from the posthumous lips of perhaps the most famous murdered Jewish girl in history. Of course, we mean Anne Frank, the doomed teen who wrote her iconic diary in Amsterdam while she and her family were hiding from the occupying Nazis. Retrieved by her father after the war, the original version of the diary contained passages that explored in graphic detail the various anatomical parts of the author’s vagina, as though she were discovering them for the first time, which indeed she seemed to be.
One would be hard-pressed to find anything seriously objectionable in these passages, but in fact they have been objected to from the diary’s first publication through to the present day. The mother of a 7th grader has in fact just filed a complaint with the Meads Mill Middle School in Northville, Michigan, saying her daughter told her the passages “made her uncomfortable,” and asking the school to no longer give students this version the book.
The mom is getting some grief over her decision to ask for a ban, and is starting to sound a little defensive, telling her local Patch, “It doesn’t mean my child is sheltered, it doesn’t mean I live in a bubble, and it doesn’t mean I'm trying to ban books.” Just certain passages in a book.
To be fair, her main complaint is that she was not told about the contents of the book first, as usually happens with potentially controversial subjects. "If they watch any kind of movie with a swear word in it, I have to sign a permission slip," she said.
And the child was also allowed to switch books by the teacher, who had originally given students a choice of books to read. “She had two books to choose from and she chose 'The Diary of Anne Frank' and I thought that was awesome," said the mom.
But she still wants the book removed from the school, which entails a time-consuming process that involves the teacher, the school principal, a committee of vested people and ultimately the school board.
Myfoxdetroit.com published the offending passage. We reprint it here:
Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn't realize there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn't see them. What's even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris…When you're standing up, all you see from the front is hair. Between your legs there are two soft, cushiony things, also covered with hair, which press together when you're standing, so you can't see what's inside. They separate when you sit down and they're very red and quite fleshy on the inside. In the upper part, between the outer labia, there's a fold of skin that, on second thought, looks like a kind of blister. That's the clitoris.
Hardly offensive unless one cannot stomach even the mention of one's genitals, this is not the first time Anne Frank’s innocent examination of her body has caused unease. In 2010, the Culpepper County public school system in Virginia stopped assigning the uncensored version of the book, also after a parent objected to its availability.
Even the original publisher balked at including the sexual passages in its first printing. According to AnneFrank.org, “The publishing company Contact in Amsterdam is finally decided upon. Pressure is exerted by the director of the company to remove a few passages from the book. He feels that Anne writes too freely about her sexuality. The company’s chief editor also makes some small changes.”
The diary was first published on June 25, 1947, and quickly sold out a succession of printings. An English version was published in 1950. In 1989, the so-called definitive version of the diary was published alongside other draft versions, and in 1995, a new translation based on the unexpurgated text was published by Susan Massotty.
Image: Cover of the 1947 original version of Anne Frank's diary.
