The Vagina Monologues Read Free Page A

Eddi Reader, Katie Puckrik, Dani Behr, Natasha McElhone, Sophie Dahl, Jane Lapotaire, 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