Show Me! is a controversial sex education book by photographer Will McBride. It appeared in 1974 in German under the title Zeig Mal!, written with psychologist Helga Fleichhauer-Hardt for children and their parents. It was translated into English a year later and was widely available in bookstores on both sides of the Atlantic for many years.
Cover of 2nd German language edition (1990) which included new material on the AIDS epidemic
Appreciated by many parents for its frank depiction of pre-adolescents discovering and exploring their sexuality, it scandalized others and eventually it was withdrawn from circulation in the United States and some other countries, though used copies remain freely available at inflated prices. (In 1978 St. Martin's Press pulled the book in response to new laws prohibiting the display of photographs depicting sexual behavior involving children under sixteen.) In Germany the book was followed in 1990 by a second edition that included, among other additions, a discussion of the AIDS epidemic.
A recent review by Dr. Russell A. Rohde claims that the book, "appropriately delves into the issues of breast feeding, adolescence, pubertal changes, menses, sexual anatomies, pregnancy, masturbation, contraception, sexual behavioral disturbances and venereal disease. [...] I am not aware of any book comparable to this illustrated primer that fills the needs of sexual education so well."
D. F. Janssen, in Growing Up Sexually. Volume II: The Sexual Curriculum: The Manufacture and Performance of Pre-Adult Sexualities (Oct., 2002)[1], places it at one extreme of a late 20th c. visual and textual revolution that enabled parents to illustrate information that up to that time had been transmitted orally. He sees the work as subversive not for its "too frank" portrayal of childhood sexuality but for the primacy that image takes over text. In his eyes, the work "comes out of a culture with a long history of pathologising so-addressed primal scenes," a history that became manifest in particular with regard to the works of Will McBride.
Bibliographic details
- 1974: Zeig mal. Ein Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern Foreword by Helmut Kentler. Wuppertal
- 1975: Show Me!: A Picture Book of Sex for Children and Parents St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312722753
- 1990: Zeig mal. Ein Bilderbuch für Kinder und Eltern (2nd. ed.) 195 p. Wuppertal: Hammer. ISBN 3872943014
- 1995: Zeig Mal Mehr (5 ed.). 176 p. Beltz. ISBN 3407851065