On Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 I was attending the Vagina Monologues for the first time, the production by Eve Ensler, who wrote about interviews she held with women across the globe about their vaginas, self-explanatory. She excerpts the testimony to group them into themed pieces – sexual freedom, war time rapes, first experiences, and first-hand account of stories that would cause mental collapse in any man whose penis was submitted to likewise wrangling, twisting, robbery, and torture.
I had heard bits and pieces performed by enthusiastic female friends who told me that they had to show me a new book of stories about female sexual empowerment. I had gathered the general tone of the book was one of strong female attitude – something I was leery of. I have a heavy attraction to strong women who won’t take shit from anyone, and I was afraid my objective journalist eye for the event would drown from my drool, metaphorically speaking.
I was handed a program, and took my seat. I noticed random facts had been thrown onto the pages, and had immediate issue with some. “2/3 of the cast has had a negative sexual experience.” I wondered exactly what the definition of a ‘negative sexual experience’ was. Boring? Over too soon? Or impolite to say the least, sans-condom without asking first, or other gray areas, while still genuine gripes, needed to be explained. And as far as “38% of the cast has [been] a victim of sexual violence and/or abuse.” goes – violence is violence, but I recalled a problem told to me by a lawyer acquaintance of mine that the term “sexual abuse” had been thrown around so loosely in terms of a cat call, dark look, or just plain awkward attempts at first dates, the cases were losing their legal definition and entering the realm of simply being cried “wolf” one time too many.
My worry of being blinded by the sexual glitter satiated, I waited while the lights dimmed.
The first piece was called “Hair”, a woman’s story of her husband cheating on her and dragging her to marriage counseling because she wouldn’t shave her vagina for him. While walking into the territory of supposing undercurrents of pedophilia in the man (“it looked like a little girl, and he got off on that”), it still brought to light the fact that he was blaming her for not changing a vital part of her body to satisfy him.
For the record, the suggestion needs to be laid now: Ladies, if a man will nit-pick over whether or not you’ve shaved your vagina, and he’s not simply happy to be allowed to be there in the first place, kick him out of the fucking bed! At least that was the lesson I thought everyone should walk away with.
That was followed by a collection of one-liners: “What would your vagina wear?” and “What would it say?” – answers funnier than anything I could come up with or recall right now. See the show.
Then began the 4th monologue, my personal favorite, called “The Flood”, a story from a 72-year-old woman who hadn’t had a sexual experience in her life. Her curse was due to a teenage SNAFU, wherein she accidentally soiled herself (“Urine?” Please…) after being kissed – “like I had always seen in the movies” – on her first date. The guilt of exciting herself, in public and on the new car’s white leather seat, led her to avoid The Flood for the rest of her life, saying her vagina was shut like a gate, and no one goes there or is allowed in. Again, folks – guy takes a car over a woman, kick him to the curb going 50.
At the end of “The Flood”, the woman attempts to hold some embarrassment at the fact that she had told this story to Ensler, a complete stranger. But she realizes she had never talked to anyone before about the episode. And she feels better for having talked to someone about it. Interesting postscript to that story: shortly after being interviewed for her story, the woman (according to the monologues) told Ensler that she had finally pleasured herself, guilt free, for the first time in decades, and had cried with joy afterward.
Every piece of literature needs a counter to work against. Antagonist is too strong of a word here, but men are definitely the foil in many of the stories. Rightfully so, since this is a collection of women empowerment, what else would suffice for supporting characters? But don’t believe anyone who says the show is an hour and a half of male bashing. One piece, “Because He Liked to Look At It”, tells the story of a woman who realizes her own self-worth when she sees herself through the eyes of a man who is enamored with her and her vagina. She can see it as perfect as he had, and she came off as the one who had her heart softened. “Bob” was a reminder that some of the things women hate themselves for is made up in their mind. Remember folks, you’re beautiful. Fuck anyone who says otherwise.
Another pair of my favorites were the flaming anger in two specific pieces. The first one being “My Angry Vagina”, relaying a grocery list of complaints toward the invasive procedures socially encouraged to get women to clean their vaginas – like it’s a little kid that needs to look good in public or it will embarrass its mother. It was little more than a recap for anyone who’s forgotten, but gold nonetheless. For the record, women have to push dry cotton into their most anatomically sensitive area in their bodies on a regular basis. As well as occasionally needing medical inspection with hardware that resembles cold steel plumbing tools more than anything. You’d get a bit pissed, too. “My Short Skirt” was a pair of righteously hateful women railing against the idea that wearing short skirt meant they begged for something, deserved it, or were asking for it. They came just short of asking for the chance to castrate the type of men that George Carlin said want to send women to prison for being cock-teases, but I understand if not everyone shares my sense of humor. I tried to keep my tongue in, but the louder and angrier they got, the wider grew my shit-eating grin.
The rest of the show was stories with titles like “I Was 12 My Mother Slapped Me”, “My Vagina Was My Village”, “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could”, “Comfort Women” (no, not those kind, perv. Women who were raped in wars), “Smell” (akin to “Wear” and “Say”), “Reclaiming Cunt” (think black people reclaiming the term nigger – same idea, with audience participation of screaming “CUNT!” at the top of our lungs, no less), and “A Six-Year-Old Girl Was Asked” (“Smell”, “Wear”, and “Say’, except 6 years old…and ADORABLE!).
But I saw the second to last piece, “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy” as the head mark piece – the one that signified everything the Monologues were about. It was a monologue by a former lawyer who became a sex worker for women only, simply because she was a “moan connoisseur”. As she listed all the different species of groans and howls, I waited to see how many people would be able to keep laughing through what seemed to be 20 to 30 different versions of sexual yells and screams, if the unabashed sexuality would be too much for anyone – the crowd rode on every scream, moan, lean, tooth grit, and arm flail. I was proud of my Midwest people.
I thought of those underlying, hidden yelps that meant everything to the person who finally let it out, because it was everything to them. A sexually excited scream is exactly what Whitman was talking about when he spoke of the barbaric YAWP – “I too am untranslatable.” The secret thing, voice, and language, held back by convention, hatred, and everyone else who’s jealous of how loud you are. I saw the piece holding the woman race up against everything, telling it to make noise, and it had things to say, hatred to spew, and things to start demanding for itself.
After the last piece – Ensler’s personal monologue about the respect she gained for vaginas after seeing a childbirth – I was left with a lot to think about. I knew it all meant something, but I couldn’t think of a handle to give myself on it. The closest thing I could think of was a Classic Greek play called Lysistrata where all the women forsake sex for their husbands until they stop their warfare. But I had only heard about the play – I couldn’t think of anything I’d actually seen that was like the monologues. I knew there were complaints of show, that it simplified and degraded women to be thought of in terms their vaginas. I had also heard that it was anti-men, or suggested a simple role reversal – women in charge subjugating men. All opinions I disagreed with, but was still able to see how one could come to those conclusion. I had recently come to the realization that true art doesn’t actually make the world a better place, just a more complex one.
I spoke with a male friend of mine afterwards who was ambivalent towards the show. He said women and sexuality was an intricate issue, and he felt the monologues oversimplified something that needed in depth dialogue, and the presentation had only scratched the surface.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘But I couldn’t think of a better place to start.’
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