I just thought it was important to share my thoughts about The Vagina Monologues. I have been to see the play on two different occasions - with two completely different experiences. The first time I went to the play in Midwest City, I thought it was absolutely hilarious. The second time that I saw the play was for V-Day in Tulsa - performed by Eve Ensler. It made me angry at all the violence in the world - especially that against women. I watched it on HBO and it made me cry about all the atrocities to women in this world. I know that every time I see the Vagina Monologues I have a completely different experience. I watched it another time on cable and felt arousal. The whole experience is fulfilling in its own way because of the emotional roller-coaster that I go through as I watch it.
It is an experience of emotional exposure. All the womanly emotions are laid out bare and raw for the world to know more intimately than they would otherwise. Woman may talk about their feelings more than men, but women do not generally expose this much of their vulnerabilities to anyone - ever.
I have seen the play at least four times now, but I have yet to read the book. I wonder how reading it all in black and white will make me feel?
From an Editorial Review on Amazon.com: "I say vagina because I want people to respond," says playwright Eve Ensler, creator of the hilarious, disturbing soliloquies in The Vagina Monologues, a book based on her one-woman play. And respond they do--with horror, anger, censure, and sparks of wonder and pleasure. Ensler is on a fervent mission to elevate and celebrate this much mumbled-about body part. She asked hundreds of women of all ages a series of questions about their vaginas (What do you call it? How would you dress it?) that prompt some wondrous answers. Standouts among the euphemisms are tamale, split knish, choochi snorcher, Gladys Siegelman--Gladys Siegelman?--and, of course, that old standby "down there." "Down there?" asks a composite character springing from several older women. "I haven't been down there since 1953. No, it had nothing to do with [American president] Eisenhower." Two of the most powerful pieces include a jagged poem stitched together from the memories of a Bosnian woman raped by soldiers and an American woman sexually abused as a child who reclaims her vagina as a place of wild joy. The Vagina Monologues have evolved over time and now support the V-Day Organization. V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.
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