The Vagina Monologues The V-Day Edition | Page 5

Thandie Newton, and Gillian Anderson. In 2000, V-Day was celebrated
inLos Angeles,Santa Fe,Sarasota,Aspen, andChicago. In three years, V-Day has happened at over three
hundred colleges, with performances of The Vagina Monologues directed and performed by students
and faculty. All the productions raise money and consciousness for local groups that work to stop
violence toward women. The Off-Broadway production of The Vagina Monologues will raise nearly $1
million for V-Day. Subsequent productions around the country and the world will support the movement
as well. At this point, the V-Day Fund is supporting grassroots groups around the world, where, in
several cases, women are fighting with their lives to protect women and end the violence. InAfghanistan,
there is RAWA, Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a group devoted to liberating
women from the terrible oppression of the Taliban. There, women are not allowed to work, to be
educated, to go to the doctor, or to leave their house without a male escort. There, women are being
buried under their burqas without any protection from rape or murder. The V-Day Fund is helping
RAWA educate women in clandestine schools, documenting illegal executions, and building a women's
movement. InKenya,Africa, we are supporting Tasaru Ntomonok (Safe Motherhood Initiative), part of
Mandeolo—a project that is stopping the practice of young girls being genitally mutilated by introducing a
new coming-of-age ritual without the cut. Recently, we were able to buy them a red jeep so they can
travel more easily from village to village as they continue the education and prevention. InCroatia, we are
working with the Center for Women War Victims, which through our support will open the first rape
crisis center in the formerYugoslavia. The center will also be able to train women in Kosova and
Chechyna to work with women in those countries who have been raped and traumatized during the war.
V-Day is working in collaboration with Planned Parenthood to implement within their already existing
programs a strategy to prevent and end violence toward women. The list goes on and on. The miracle of
V-Day, like The Vagina Monologues, is that it happened because it had to happen. A call, perhaps; an
unconscious mandate, perhaps. I surrender to the Vagina Queens. Something is unfolding. It is both
mystical and practical. It requires that we show up, do our exercise, and get out of the way. In order for
the human race to continue, women must be safe and empowered. It's an obvious idea, but like a vagina,
it needs great attention and love in order to be revealed.
 
THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES
 
 I bet you're worried. I was worried. That's why I began this piece. I was worried about vaginas. I
was worried about what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don't think about them.
I was worried about my own vagina. It needed a context of other vaginas—a community, a culture of
vaginas. There's so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them—like the Bermuda Triangle. Nobody
ever reports back from there.

 In the first place, it's not so easy even to find your vagina. Women go weeks, months, sometimes
years without looking at it. I interviewed a high-powered businesswoman who told me she was too busy;
she didn't have the time. Looking at your vagina, she said, is a full day's work. You have to get down
there on your back in front of a mirror that's standing on its own, full-length preferred. You've got to get
in the perfect position, with the perfect light, which then is shadowed somehow by the mirror and the
angle you're at. You get all twisted up. You're arching your head up, killing your back. You're exhausted
by then. She said she didn't have the time for that. She was busy. So I decided to talk to women about
their vaginas, to do vagina interviews, which became vagina monologues. I talked with over two hundred
women. I talked to older women, young women, married women, single women, lesbians, college
professors, actors, corporate professionals, sex workers, African American women, Hispanic women,
Asian American women, Native American women, Caucasian women, Jewish women. At first women
were reluctant to talk. They were a little shy. But once they got going, you couldn't stop them. Women
secretly love to talk about their vaginas. They get very excited, mainly because no one's ever asked them
before. Let's just start with the word “vagina.” It sounds like an infection at best, maybe a medical
instrument: “Hurry, Nurse, bring me the vagina.”
 “Vagina.”
 “Vagina.” Doesn't matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say. It's
a totally ridiculous, completely unsexy word. If you use it during sex, trying to be politically correct—
“Darling, could you stroke my vagina?”—you kill the act right there. I'm worried about vaginas, what we
call them and don't call them. In Great Neck, they call it a pussycat. A woman there told me that her
mother used to tell her, “Don't wear panties underneath your pajamas, dear; you need to air out your
pussycat.” InWestchesterthey called it a pooki, inNew Jerseya