The Vagina Monoblogs

            Vajayjay.  I love this word, and used it repeatedly in any context I could, even when it had no place and made no sense.  The word always brought some reaction out of people.  They would laugh, look uncomfortable, tell me it was “cute”, or in my mother’s case, tell me “it wasn’t funny.”  Eve Ensler uses The Vagina Monologues to start a revolution.  She explores the impact of the word vagina through an avenue that includes numerous cross generational interviews, in depth questions, and most importantly performing the pieces in a public forum.  It is essential, in Enslers opinion, that the monologues be performed in public to give vaginas, and more specifically woman, a voice.  Women from a multitude of decades and from all over the world are featured in this collection, and their various cultural, generational and traditional ideals about are brought to the forefront.  When discussing her interview of a group of women between the ages of sixty five and seventy five Ensler says “Unfortunately, most of the women in this age group had very little conscious relationship with their vaginas.  I felt terribly lucky to have grown up in the feminine era.  One woman who was seventy-two had never even seen her vagina.”(pg 23)  The suggestion that an entire age group of women experienced an almost sexual suppression is shocking, especially when compared to “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy.”  What better way to explore Ensler’s reasoning for bringing the monologues to the stage and making the vagina an entity all its own, then to shed light on the transformation the vagina has made over the past fifty years.  “I love vaginas.  I love women.  I do not see them as separate things.  Women pay me to dominate them, to excite them, to make them come.  I did not start out like this.”(pg 105)  When brought to the world’s stage, The Vagina Monologues provides more than eroticism and what some would consider crude language and images.  Instead, it lets us feel more comfortable as women.