The vagina represents a “wide red pulsing heart … that can ache for us and stretch for us, die for us and bleed and bleed us into this difficult, wondrous world.” These were the words contained within the final monologue, “I Was There in the Room,” performed by Dali Bravo ’08 in West Hall during Friday night’s rendition of The Vagina Monologues.
Organized and produced in an effort to celebrate V-Day, RPI’s production joined the ranks of over 2,700 benefit events taking place by volunteer advocates in the United States and around the world this year. V-Day, with the ‘V’ signifying “Victory, Valentine, and Vagina,” is a national and global campaign to raise awareness and funds for groups advocating an end to violence against women and girls. Friday evening’s event included acts that varied in tone and in the emotional response evoked from the audience. While some of the monologues were laugh-out-loud-funny, others were defiant, poignant, bold, and haunting.
The audience was touched by Chi-Chi Nwaizu’s ’07 performance of “My Vagina Was My Village,” a monologue compiled from the painful accounts of Bosnian women subjected to rape camps. Later, the audience roared with laughter during the presentation of “The Woman who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy,” spoken, and hilariously enacted, by Elaine Lunsford ’07. Cindy Tang ’06 valiantly argued in “My Short Skirt” that a woman should be able to wear whatever she chooses without the possible sanction of being judged negatively. The monologue seemed, however, to send the message that women should be allowed to dress provocatively and fault men for thinking they are dressing as “loose” women.
The Vagina Monologues, written by Eve Ensler, premiered off Broadway in 1996 according to information seen on Wikipedia. Each monologue within the piece relates to the vagina in some way, with the recurring theme that the sexual organ represents a tool for female empowerment. Constructed after interviewing nearly 200 women about their views on sex and violence against women, Ensler originally created the Monologues to “celebrate the vagina.” The piece has since taken on the purpose of symbolizing the movement to end violence against women.
The money raised by RPI’s V-Day performance benefited Rensselaer’s Sexual Assault Response Team and the Rensselaer County Sexual Assault and Crime Victims Assistance Program. Organized and produced by Kerrissa Lynch ’06, The Vagina Monologues succeeded in presenting an evening of provocative dialogue and important sexual violence education for both its cast members, whether new or returning, and the audience, who also contained both “newbies” to the Monologues experience and veterans to Ensler’s creation.
Despite the obvious good intentions of the RPI students and staff dedicated to carrying on Ensler’s tradition, critics have often questioned the “new feminist religion” that calls on women to worship their vagina. “The vagina is like the meter of your life, the motor, and if all works there, it all works everywhere,” Ensler has claimed. She has also confessed how she did not feel right with the world until she started living in her vagina, instead of her brain. “Whatever that means,” commented conservative journalist Monique Stuart as seen in an article on the Human Events website.
Catherine Brumley, an undergraduate student at Gonzaga University, even went so far as to propose that The Vagina Monologues is “bad” for college women. She questioned whether the shock value of the description of graphic scenes including masturbation, lesbian sex, rape, and genital mutilation actually makes college women “happier, more fulfilled individuals,” according to her article on the Independent Women’s Forum.
Sure, the “naughty” premise of the production elicits interest from college students seeking to explore those traditionally taboo subjects. But college is a time when many young women are seeking for personal definition and meaning in their lives. Should finding meaning within the sexual organ of the vagina really be the capstone of this journey of self-discovery for young women? Brumley argues that the danger of The Vagina Monologues lies in the fact that Ensler is telling women that primarily, they are sexual beings, defined by their sexual organs.
Brumley also writes that a sexual double standard is established in The Vagina Monologues. While male violence against women is certainly unforgivable, not all men are abusive, and not all abusive persons are men. Brumley notes that the double standard “can be clearly seen if one imagines the roar of indignation and protest that would arise among feminists if a male version of The Vagina Monologues was produced, glorifying and obsessing over the phallus.”
Despite the controversial creator of The Vagina Monologues, who chastises women whom she classifies as being “disconnected” from their vagina, such as current Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, RPI’s production of the piece succeeded in extending past Ensler’s semi-warped perception of reality. RPI’s Monologues created an environment in which the education of the minds of college students about sexual violence was possible. While there may be better ways to discuss this charged issue than asking the audience to consider, “If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?” V-Day’s mission to help women “spend their lives creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities” burned brightly during Friday’s performance.
