Vagina Monologues

but first, this blog.

The Uniform Project.

It is effing AWESOME. This designer takes one black dress and wears it every day for a year, while also making sure she doesn't wear the same outfit ever.

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I have never been to see The Vagina Monologues, even though it is done at MIT every year on Valentine's Day. I sort of like the idea of it, as a medium for brutal honesty about what it means to be human and female.

But I also am hesitant, because so far as I can tell, vaginas serve three purposes: 1) To menstruate 2) To have sex 3) To get the kid out.

One of these purposes is not to be celebrated, unless you're on acid, and two of these purposes are not part of my reality at this point in time.

A show focused on vaginas, therefore, seems to be a very narrow representation of womanhood.

The vagina can serve as a metaphor, I suppose. I think part of the show is supposed to be about "reclaiming" that part of the body from male domination, and in turn reclaiming the power of defining womanhood from the domain of men. And that is legitimate. But I don't really like the idea of boiling down a person into one (kind of ugly, possibly even superfluous) part of her body even as a metaphor. Synedoche is less bothersome when it involves a more useful organ.

Also, I guess that there's one piece in it where the performers repeatedly answer the question "What My Vagina Smells Like," and I am just Not Interested.