"When I first went to see Eve Ensler perform the intimate narratives in these pages-gathered from more than two hundred interviews and then turned to poetry for the theater-I thought: I already know this: it's the journey of truth telling we've been on for the past three decades. And it is. Women have entrusted her (Eve Ensler) with their most intimate experiences, from sex to birthing, from the undeclared war against women to the new freedom of love between women. On every page (of The Vagina Monologues), there is the power of saying the unsayable-as there is in the behind-the-scenes story of the book itself. ..."
This is an excerpt of the forward written by Gloria Steinem in the Villard Books 1999 version of The Vagina Monologues. I came across Eve Ensler after a production of the stage show performed by a troupe of local women in the Summer of 2001. It can now be seen on HBO.
I guess I'll have to add to this little blurb. A tradition for women auditioning and rehersing for a stage production of The Vagina Monologues is to ask women questions about their vaginas. My friend (who was involved with our local production) came to work every day with new, wacky questions. "If your vagina could talk, what would it say?" "If your vagina wore clothes, what would it wear?" and of course my personal favorite, "What does your vagina smell like?" I have never had a friend close enough to share that stuff with.
The Summer progressed and her questions and my creative answers became a game. Finally the much anticipated show date came around. Seeing women from my community talk of rape, molestation, pubic hair, making women come, and my favorite... chanting "CUNT" for twenty minutes, was an awesome experience. The show made me laugh, and blush, and even get misty-eyed.