Vaginas around campus, whether you like it or not

Tonight, Wym'on Stage will sponsor a production of Eve Ensler's, The Vagina Monologues (TVM). Usually, we would not interfere in this expression of femininity. The play has gained worldwide recognition, and, as members of a university that provides its students with a wide variety of ideas and points of view, we feel that TVM brings another version of educational entertainment to our campus.

No strangers to controversy ourselves, we applaud those who have taken the initiative to put the production together, even if the explosively vulgar and abrasive nature of its content may not appeal to a majority of the University's students. We acknowledge and respect the right of the aforementioned groups to produce TVM and present it to our University, but we vehemently criticize the invasive advertisements relying on shock value to promote tonight's performance. Despite considerable misgivings, as two members of the Tory staff, we will attend the show.

It would be hard not to have seen these ads during the last few days. A single trip down Prospect Avenue, which was cluttered with the bright pink signs, would have provided even the most uninterested of students with ample opportunities to witness their screaming vulgarities.

These signs announced such enlightening insights as, "I call it cunt," and, "It's 10 o'clock at night — do you know where your clitoris is?" Such inflammatory phrases make no attempt to be informative; their sole purpose is to grab the reader's attention with their shockingly crude nature. These advertisements seem to indicate that the producers of TVM are only interested in the production for its shocking content, and, if this is so, then the show is nothing more than pornography, hidden under the cloak of artistic expression. This type of promotion degrades the upstanding nature of our campus, and necessarily indicts its supporters as lemmings willing to ignore obvious vulgarities for the sake of some supposed revelation in this 'art.'

We are well aware that many of those behind tonight's show are not inherently pornographers, and that TVM has motives other than to be shocking. Yet, signs around our beautiful campus declaring that "I still want to touch myself, but I don't," do not reveal the show's underlying messages of feminine empowerment. Instead, these signs demonstrate an overwhelming eagerness to use blatantly explicit expressions of sexuality to induce a greater number of people to fill the seats in Richardson Auditorium. In fact, it is our belief that those responsible for the production of TVM have, in essence, been misquoted, and that our perception of the signs does not represent their true intentions. But the messages written on the signs do not make the producers look very good.

Perhaps the most disturbing revelation to come from the recent postings has to do with the reaction to those signs, which is to say none. No one on this campus seems to be in any way shocked by the words written on those signs. Our contention is that the connection to some form of art creates an illusion whereby students feel they can ignore the vulgarities and the overall grotesque nature of the signs' content because they are connected in some way to the art form itself. The simple attachment to some form of art does not, in fact, make a vulgar statement any less so. While some art can include vulgarities, that art is only justifiable when those experiencing its inelegant nature actively choose to do so. Thus, we respect that TVM will be performed for those who pay to watch it, but, when its content is violently hurled at students with no desire to ingest it, those responsible have crossed the line. And this is the effect of the bright pink signs on Prospect Avenue. They force those who have no desire to experience the perverse nature of TVM to do just that, and, in doing so, commit a serious wrong.

In response to the aforementioned trend, we, as members of the Princeton Tory, have taken it upon ourselves to demonstrate the hypocrisy inherent in the lack of attention received by the crude statements on signs purporting to advertise TVM. Be sure to look out for the light blue signs posted around campus. A likely response will be disgust, and, in fact, it should be. We sincerely hope that each person that reads these signs will take offense to them. They are vulgar, and they were meant to be so. Yet, we wonder if people on this campus would be so outraged if these signs were printed in conjunction with an actual artistic performance. Unfortunately, we are afraid that the answer is no. The obvious indecency of our signs should make every person who did not give TVM's advertisements a second thought stop and reconsider just how acceptable they really are. We put up our signs to expose the pink signs for the indecent articles of smut that they are, and we feel that we have been successful in our attempts. Ryan Feeney is an economics major from San Francisco, California. He can be reached at rfeeney@princeton.edu. Peter B. Hegseth is a politics major from Forrest Lake, Minnesota. He can be reached at phegseth@princeton.edu.