The Vagina Monologues
Articles, interviews, resources, debates, reviews and polemics on The Vagina Monologues, the play by Eve Ensler, and the cultural phenomenon it has sparked.
OFFICIAL SITE
The official homepage for Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.
AUTHOR PROFILES & INTERVIEWS
Melissa Giannini explores the Vagina Monologues phenomenon and talks to playwright Eve Ensler.
Metro Times Detroit (Jan 2001)
Pamela Grossman interviews Eve Ensler about laughter, desire and reentering her own nether regions.
Salon (Apr 2000)
Christopher Arnott interviews Eve Ensler about the evolution of The Vagina Monologues from off-Broadway one-woman show to cultural phenomenon. "With other things I've done, I've had that--you know, 'This is my play and I've written it.' I don't have that feeling about The Vagina Monologues. I feel I got to serve something, that I listened to women's stories and I turned them into something by listening and then loving those women."
Westchester County Weekly (Apr 2001)
Susan Dominus profiles Eve Ensler, "Vagina Monologist, antiviolence activist, international coalition builder, high-powered fund-raiser, drama queen."
New York Times Sunday Magazine
CRITICISM AND DEBATE
Camille Paglia blasts the Vagina Monologues phenomenon and the "psychological poison of Ensler's archaic creed of victimization." ... Salon later printed two letters to the editor agreeing with Paglia.
Salon (Feb 2001)
Barbara Raab reviews the new book The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World at Your Fingertips and interviews its author, Rebecca Chalker. However, Raab opens the article with a humorous rant about the Vagina Monologues V-Day performance at Madison Square Garden: "corporate sponsors promoting shame along with their products and multimillion-dollar movie stars gathering in a sports arena on a Saturday night, along with thousands of women, for a high-gloss event that links sex with violence instead of pleasure."
Salon (Mar 2001)
Betty Dodson criticizes The Vagina Monologues both for its misrepresentation of her own Bodysex Workshops and for its pervasive anti-sex ideology. "That's the main problem with 'V-Day': Women end up celebrating sexual violence and not the creative or regenerative pleasures of erotic love. Ending violence is a worthy cause and I'm all for it. But consistently equating sex with violence offers no solution."
The Spectator (April 2001)
In response to Betty Dodson's critical piece, Marcy Sheiner wrote a powerful rebuttal called "Give V-Day a Chance". "Betty Dodson's tirade against The Vagina Monologues and V-Day represents the worst thinking of the 'sex positive movement.' Like many sex radicals, Dodson can see no further than the clit or the tip of the penis. She certainly has the right to criticize any distortion of her own work in Eve Ensler's play — and it sounds as though Ensler was responsive to her critique. Beyond that, though, Dodson's essay is, in my opinion, misguided, self-serving and mean-spirited." (Originally published in the Spectator, reprinted here at Daze Reader with the author's permission)
ARTICLES AND REVIEWS
Sara Kelly reviews the published version of The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, with a foreword by Gloria Steinem. "Assembled in seemingly random fashion from interviews with 'a diverse group of over two hundred women about their vaginas,' the monologues, their author contends, are for our own good. The intent is purely missionary -- to reclaim the much-maligned 'vagina' for women the same way the gay community has reclaimed the term 'queer.'"
Salon (Feb 1998)
Sharon Lerner reviews the celebrity performance of The Vagina Monologues at Madison Square Garden before 18,000 people on Valentine's Day. Readers included Glenn Close, Queen Latifah, Brooke Shields, Edie Falco, Isabella Rossellini, Ricki Lake, Julie Kavner, Carol Kane, Amy Irving, Rita Wilson, Marisa Tomei, Gloria Steinem, Rosie Perez, Calista Flockhart, Oprah Winfrey, Phoebe Snow, Jane Fonda and Swoosie Kurtz. After talking to many participants backstage, Lerner ponders the strange fact that so many prominent women are willing to reclaim, celebrate and shout the word "cunt" but still recoil from the word "feminism."
Village Voice (Feb 2001)
At Salt Lake City Weekly, Christopher Smart belittles local newspaper coverage of a production of The Vagina Monologues by a national touring company. The Deseret News, a Mormon church-owned newspaper, previewed the show with this blurb: "The print version of the script indicates that the production is mostly tasteless and vulgar. Many people would likely find the material in the show to be highly offensive ... You're on your own with this one."
Salt Lake City Weekly
From the San Francisco Chronicle: "Recently, when a woman appeared on KTVU's 'Mornings on 2' to promote V-Day, an anti-violence movement centered around 'The Vagina Monologues,' the woman was told not to mention the word vagina on the air. It is OK to use the word on newscasts that air later in the day, but not in the morning, said news director Andrew Finlayson." Columnist Joan Ryan ponders this odd semi-taboo and calls Eve Ensler for her response.
San Francisco Chronicle (Feb 2002)
In her introduction to The Vagina Monologues, Eve Ensler maintains that "women secretly love to talk about their vaginas." Jaime Buerger tests this theory by convening six Las Vegas women for a vagina talk roundtable. (Oct 2002)
