Hiatus: Over

If you don't already know me, you need to know that I am the absolute worst at keeping up with stuff like this.  I'm determined, though, so I'm posting back issues.  Let's start with Thursday.

I had a pretty legit reason for not posting that night.  I actually had plans: I went with my friends Cora and Racheal to see The Vagina Monologues.  I had never seen the show before largely because this is exactly the type of thing I hate.  I don't need to hear about your womanhood, and I hate hippie shit.  It turns out the show was mostly lacking in hippie shit until the end, when all the cast members stood onstage and told us we needed to quick fracking because it was ruining the earth, which is everyone's vagina.  Or something.  I'm anti-fracking, of course, but it was such a weird tie-in, I couldn't handle it.

Not only did I think the show was going to be a bunch of Kumbaya, but I thought it was going to be women speechifying about their own vaginas.  I didn't realize it was pre-written.  I thought when a person auditioned she did so with her own speech about how much she loves her lady parts; not so.  This was mostly written in 1996 and apparently a speech is added every year.  So, OK.  Completely scripted.  Some of the stories (based on interviews) were excellent.  Some made me incredibly sad, some made me laugh, two almost made me sob aloud (those two were the one about trans women and the one about Bosnian women raped during the civil war).  I really had to keep myself together to weep silently.  I left thinking, I enjoyed that.  It was good. I'm glad I went.

And I still am, but...

It was really reductive.  Vagina=woman=vagina.  You are your vagina, it is you.  Period.  I would have liked there to be some nod to the possibility that women are more than the sum of our parts.  Don't we get put in boxes (ha ha) enough by the patriarchal society the show claims to be against? Why do it to ourselves?  And another thing... it didn't seem like Eve Ensler (the playwright) or any of the women who put the show on actually know... what the vagina... is.  If you don't, don't be ashamed.  Many women are unfamiliar with their reproductive system.  If you can see it with a hand mirror, it's your vulva.  The vagina is one part of the reproductive system, and it's inside.  No Hollywood actress has ever accidentally flashed her vagina getting out of a car; she's flashed her vulva.

I typically don't go around correcting people about that stuff because I'm a pedant and it's a weakness and I don't need the whole wide world to know it all the time, but you'd think a play called The Vagina Monologues would address the misnomer.  It was weirdly unsettling.  I mean, go see the play it if you get a chance.  If nothing else, the proceeds typically go to serve abused women in the community, so that's a good reason.

TIME'S UP!