vaggie tales
Earlier this year, author Nancy Redd was asked to give her 2007 body-positive book 'Body Drama' to 250 teenage Hurricane Katrina survivors at a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the 'Vagina Monologues'. "I've harbored a major crush on Eve Ensler for over nine years," Nancy says. "Growing up with normal teenage angst and inadequate health education, I hated my vulva and I never referred to "down there" as anything other than a "hoo-ha". The Monologues were my introduction to feminism; nothing was more empowering to 18-year-old me than having a legit reason to scream "MY SHORT SKIRT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU!" and "IT'S SUPPOSED TO SMELL LIKE PUSSY!" to the world." Below, Nancy fills us in on everything that went down in the (very fertile) Crescent City over the weekend, where 18,000 participants raised awareness of violence towards women by giving love to vaginas and the amazing women who own them.
Eve Ensler considers
New Orleans to be the
vagina of America. In fact, in her tribute monologue to New Orleans, Welcome to the Wetlands, she makes some pretty awesome comparisons to the vag, like:
"We call her sultry and sexy when we crave her, but after when we want to demean her and dismiss her, we call her swampy and soiled."
and
"We brag about her music, the way she moves, we beg to get inside her, but disown her later when she has needs."
That pretty much sums up the ex-boyfriend we've all had and hated, right?
More »
A Los Angeles high school confiscated an issue of the school paper because of the presence of an anatomically-correct diagram of a
vagina. "The special Valentine's Day issue of Grover Cleveland High School's
Le Sabre newspaper featured an article on the front page about
The Vagina Monologues, a play by
Eve Ensler, that was accompanied by a labeled diagram of a vagina and a hot-pink headline reading: "Happy Vagina Day," according to UPI. Principal
Bob Marks confiscated the issue before it could distributed. The editor-in-chief of
Le Sabre,
Richard Edmond, said he thought the vag was no big deal, and that the diagram was meant to increase awareness about violence against women. The day after V-day, Edmonds and two other students got sent home for wearing t-shirts which read, "My vagina is obscene." He should totally make friends with the
"safe sex or no sex" T-shirt girls from Illinois! [
UPI]
Eve: "
New Orleans is the vagina of America, if you think about it."
Jane: "Yes. It's Moist. It's a place where people come for fun!" -
Eve Ensler and
Jane Fonda discussing why the big V-Day celebration will be held in New Orleans this April, on
Today.
clips
As many already know, actresses/activists Jane Fonda and Eve Ensler were welcomed onto the Today show this morning in honor of the 10th anniversary of Ensler's Vagina Monologues, the one-woman, pussy-positive show that has since become a staple of college campuses. And what a welcome they gave back! Ensler and Fonda, who sat down with Today host Meredith Vieira, discussed the epidemic of violence against women (Ensler calls it "femicide") both at home and abroad, most notably in the Congo, where the brutal torture and rape of women and young girls has become, for lack of a better term, de rigeur. But before she and Ensler got to the serious stuff, Fonda, 70, recounted just how she got involved with the Vagina Monologues and its related V-Day Foundation, dropping the word "cunt" in the process. Clip above.
Related: The V-Day Event Of The Decade [VDay]
Earlier: Why Is The Word Cunt Still Such A Big Deal?
The
Seattle Times has
rejected an ad for a performance of
Eve Ensler's
The Vagina Monologues, saying that the artwork (a labial-esque heart) was "something we didn't feel was appropriate for our audience." However, the artwork in question — which was created by the event's co-sponsor, the National Council of Jewish Women —
was appropriate enough to be hung in several synagogues in the area. [
AdFreak,
Poynter]
Jezebel
