Bringing 'down there' into the spotlight

That artwork really caught your eye, didn't it? As lecturer Jean Kilbourne pointed out in her campus visit a few months ago, just about everyone is cashing in on shock value these days. Sex sells, she told the audience, pointing to a commercial for Uncle Ben's rice that boasts, "Whatever you're giving him tonight, he'll enjoy it more with rice."

Such ads capitalize on our sexual desires and the shock of a scandalous subject, linking both to an unrelated object (like rice) for economic benefit.

"It's 11 o'clock, do you know where your clitoris is?" asks a poster hanging on lamp posts and bulletin boards across the Princeton campus. At first glance, our culturally jaded, ad-bombarded brains might process this as an advertisement for a watch, or we might suspect that Uncle Ben has infiltrated the University.

But in fact, this and other equally bold posters advertise the play, "The Vagina Monologues," to be performed by the group Wym'onStage on Feb. 20 in Richardson Auditorium at 8 p.m. Unlike popular advertisements, these sexual references are not just ploys for our attention but the real subject of the performance.

The award-winning playwright of "The Vagina Monologues," Eve Ensler, actually wants to know if you know where your clitoris is. She's also curious, if your vagina could talk, what would it say? If it could get dressed, what would it wear?

A few years ago, Ensler asked these questions and many others of women from various walks of life, ranging from a Bosnian refugee to a six-year-old girl. The monologues are her artistic response to their replies, bundled in short sketches that are sometimes funny, sometimes sad, stimulating, disturbing and entirely original. They explore a territory traditionally left to the imagination, plowing confidently past taboos and discomfort to open dialogue on universal issues affecting women. Rather than "bashing" men, the monologues show the power, beauty and strength of women and their bodies.

"I was worried what we think about vaginas," Ensler said in an interview a few weeks ago, "and even more worried that we don't think about them." Ensler also was worried about how women are treated and about issues such as date rape and female genital mutilation, spousal abuse and rape as a war crime.

"The Vagina Monologues" are interspersed with what Ensler calls "vagina facts," like another poster slogan that reads, "Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every two minutes." Empowering and funny sketches balance these disturbing facts, communicating the message that women cannot forget the past or ignore the violence, but must strengthen themselves in the face of adversity and continue to live their lives.

"You have to go through a certain kind of darkness again and go back into the fire, walk through the fire and then you're free," said Ensler, herself a rape victim. "I think we're told that women who have been raped will suffer from it for the rest of their lives . . . but that's just not true. There are definite ways to recover and have a life."

When asked what advice she would give to parents in our society raising young girls, Ensler replied, "I would begin with helping girls see what incredibly sacred, powerful, gorgeous, delicious things they have in terms of their bodies. If girls don't know their bodies, they don't own their bodies."

Ensler feels that the monologues are the answer to insufficient discussion and appreciation of the female body.

"It's just feeding something that people have been hungry for for a long time," she said. "There's just this great liberation that occurs in the talking about it."

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One of the directors of the play here at the University, Charity Tinsley '02, concurred. "So many girls have never made the intimate connection," she said. "We asked girls in our cast if they had had conversations with their mothers, and most of them were of the 'down-there' generation."

Tinsley refers to the euphemism that many of us are all too familiar with: the use of the delicate phrase "down there" as a substitute for the actual word that leaves many girls to learn the truth from sleepover gossip and magazines.

"If girls were raised to appreciate their bodies, they would worship and protect them. Women perpetuate a lot of things . . . we take a lot of things that we shouldn't. We have to teach each other to be connected.

"Let's make the bond now," Tinsley said. "The play is not about segregating or male-bashing. It's just women taking a moment — it's just our moment up on stage."

When the 20-odd Princeton women take the Richardson stage Feb. 20, they will be participating in a nation-wide phenomenon known as V-Day. On or around Valentine's Day, more than 200 colleges around the country will perform the play and donate the benefits to local anti-violence facilities.

The V-Day campaign started in 1997 with a benefit celebrity performance of "The Vagina Monologues" in the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York and has since spread to college campuses and cities worldwide. V-Day has raised more than $1 million for local, national and international anti-violence groups, but most importantly, it has brought the consciousness of women to greater heights.

This year, V-Day's biggest celebration took place on Feb. 10 in Madison Square Garden, an event called "Take Back the Garden." Celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Calista Flockhart, Marisa Tomei, Jane Fonda, Claire Danes, Julia Stiles and many others shared the stage with Eve Ensler and activists from Kenya and Afghanistan for a moving performance of "The Vagina Monologues." The coordinators announced the winners of the international Stop-Rape contest, whose plans to end violence against women will be implemented with funding from V-Day.

Everyone who has seen "The Vagina Monologues" in some capacity, whether in its Off-Broadway run, in a college production or at Madison Square Garden, raves that they will never think about the female body in the same way again. Some college students have cited occurrences of "vagina envy" cropping up on campus, and Ensler has coined all kinds of terms, including "vagina miracles" and "vagina queens".

Naturally, a subject like vaginas, linked closely with female empowerment, cannot make a public impression without a dose of negative feedback. Tinsley said advertisements for last year's performance of "The Vagina Monologues" were torn down, and faculty even called the directors to ask that the posters be removed from their buildings.

Ensler acknowledges that "vagina" is not a word most of us are comfortable with, but she said this attitude is antiquated and perpetuates the disconnection of women from their bodies. "I think part of it is creating ideas and dialogues where people aren't afraid," she said.

Tinsley echoed these sentiments: "The word vagina is a threat to men and women — to hear and to see it in print. But you can't break apart the woman, if you're going to love her, you have to love the whole thing."

Last year, "The Vagina Monologues" sold out its three allotted performances at Theatre~Intime, and because of popular demand, was performed a fourth time at the Third World Center. This year, there will only be a single performance on Feb. 20 in Richardson Auditorium. Whether the posters caught your eye or not, "The Vagina Monologues" are certainly worth a second look.