again while listening to a
group of twenty or so diverse nine- to sixteen-year-old girls as they decided to come up with a collective
word that included everything—vagina, labia, clitoris. After much discussion, “power bundle” was their
favorite. More important, the discussion was carried on with shouts and laughter. I thought: What a long
and blessed way from a hushed “down there.”
I wish my own foremothers had known their bodies were sacred. With the help of outrageous voices
and honest words like those in this book, I believe the grandmothers, mothers, and daughters of the
future will heal their selves—and mend the world.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Gloria Steinem
Introduction
The Vagina Monologues
V-Day
Join the V-Day Movement
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION I am not sure why I was chosen. I didn't, for example, have girlhood fantasies
about becoming “vagina lady” (which I am often called, sometimes loudly across a crowded shoe store).
I could not have imagined that I would one day be talking about vaginas on talk shows in places
likeAthens,Greece, chanting the word vagina with four thousand wild women inBaltimore, or having
thirty-two public orgasms a night. These things were not in my plans. In this sense, I don't think I had
much to do with The Vagina Monologues. It possessed me. I see now that I was a prime candidate. I
was a playwright. I had for years written plays based on interviews with people. I was a feminist. I had
been violated sexually and physically by my father. I had exhibitionist tendencies. I have been known to
outrage, and I longed with all of my being to find a way back into my vagina. I don't really remember
how it began: a conversation with an older woman about her vagina; her saying contemptuous things
about her genitals that shocked me and got me thinking about what other women thought about their
vaginas. I remember asking friends, who surprised me with their openness and willingness to talk. There
was one friend in particular who told me that if her vagina got dressed, it would wear a beret. She was
going through a French phase. I definitely do not remember writing the piece. Simply put, I was taken—
used by the Vagina Queens. I never outlined the play or consciously shaped it. As a matter of fact, the
whole process was totally off the record. I interviewed women about their vaginas while I was writing my
“real” play. It was my partner, Ariel Orr Jordan (who, I am now convinced, was somehow on the payroll
of the Vagina Queens), who got me to take it seriously and helped me conceive the piece and make a
plan. But even then, to some degree, The Vagina Monologues has never really been any of my business.
I show up. I exercise to stay in shape. I drink plenty of power mocha cappuccinos. I try to stay out of the
way. Here, for example, are some of the mysteries: I was never a performer. It did not occur to me that I
was actually performing The Vagina Monologues until I had been doing it for about three years. Before
this point, I felt merely as if I were telling very personal stories that had been generously told to me. I felt
strangely, and at times fiercely, protective of these women and their stories. I could not move when I was
telling the stories. I had to remain seated in a high-back stool, with a place to rest my feet. It was like
climbing into a spaceship every night. I had to speak into a microphone, even in places where I could
easily be heard. The microphone functioned as a kind of steering wheel at times, an accelerator at others.
For the first years, I needed to wear stockings and heavy boy shoes to perform the piece. Then later,
once my director, Joe Mantello, got me to take off my shoes, I could only do it barefoot. I had to hold
5-by-8 cards in my hands all through the performance every night, even though I had the piece
memorized. It was as if the women I had interviewed were made present by those cards, and I needed
them there with me. Vagina stories found me, as did the people who wanted to produce the play or bring
it to their town. Whenever I have tried to write a monologue to serve a politically correct agenda, for
example, it always fails. Note the lack of monologues about menopause or transgendered women. I tried.
The Vagina Monologues is about attraction, not promotion. Many things that have happened in the life of
The Vagina Monologues seem completely surreal and at the same time completely logical. Here are
examples: Newspaper Headlines: THAT GIRL GOES DOWN THERE (Marlo Thomas in TVM)
MAYOR'S WIFE TALKS DIRTY (Donna Hanover's decision to be in TVM) Red boas on the front
page of six London papers the day after V-Day at the Old Vic—newsstands in Britain look like the
vagina sea.
TV:
Kathie Lee Gifford chants the word vagina with Calista Flockhart and her studio audience on Live with
Regis
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