This past weekend’s “Vagina Monologues” opened with a stage of about 20 female performers in red and black outfits. The show raised money for the AVALON, a local center for abused women and children, and the Fistula Foundation, which gives medical care to women in Africa. The show ran for March 14-16 and was presented by VOX and UCAB.
In the beginning of the show the women announced, “We were worried about vaginas.” The secrecy of the vagina troubles society today; people hesitate to bring it up, shoo-shooing it as some kind of disease or affliction.
It seems more people know about Britney Spears eating habits than their own vagina.
However, rather than ignoring the topic, the “Vagina Monologues” created a platform to start discussion of serious, comical and hush-hush issues affecting the state of the vagina.
Of the 200 women interviewed about their vagina, the show discovered a surprising fact: “Women secretly loved to talk about vaginas.”
As a proud carrier of a vagina, I learned a variety of ways to refer to mine. Some women call it “poonamie,” others “totita” or “happy dugout.” By introducing the audience to the slang descriptions of the vagina, the monologues eased my embarrassment of my grandmother’s calling it “pooner” for the first ten years of my life.
Then, very scientifically, they introduced a graph of the collective vagina happiness of College females. Plotting vagina happiness on the “y” axis, and time on the “x,” events such as blow-out raised the line while mishaps such as leaving one’s vibrator in the dorm over winter break lowered the line. By tailoring the program to fit the average vagina at the College, the crew created a sense of vagina unity, bringing together the female campus in our annual cycles.
The “Vagina Monologues” next shared the difficulties of men’s attraction in relation to vagina happiness. A bare shaved vagina, more resembling the side of a naked mole rat than a female reproductive organ, is more scratchy than sexy.
Yet the show dealt with bigger issues than shaved vaginas. They raised awareness of various past and present topics threatening females.
For instance, they discussed that over 200,000 women in the United States are raped every year. During World War II in Japan, between 10,000 and 200,000 women were estimated to be forced into sexual slavery.
The show raised homeland and international issues, creating a sense of global female comradeship.
A final fun fact: Some may think Virginia is a conservative state, but it is not one of the five U.S. states who have outlawed the distribution of vibrators yet legally allow the sale of guns.
Overall the show aroused a range of emotions in the audience from laughter to shock and embarrassment, particularly at the outbreak of the particularly memorable Irish Catholic orgasmic moan.