In the Body of the World

In the Body of the World: A Memoir  by Eve Ensler
2013
Weight:8.8 oz
Method of Disposal: Lending Library

I first read The Vagina Monologues in high school, and I loved it.  I walked around reciting "My Angry Vagina" to anyone willing to listen.  In college, I had the chance to meet Eve Ensler and Jane Fonda in one of many Vagina Monologue productions I would go to see.  Attending an all women;s private school, I also began to see some of the more problematic sides of the Monologues and white western feminism.  I would speak to these too and would be guilty of my own mistakes throughout the years.

It did not stop me from going to Charis, our local feminist bookstore, to buy Necessary Targets and have it signed by her at a reading.  I was never again enthralled like I was in high school, but I also never completely lost touch. 

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this book at the Dollar Store of all places.  I thought maybe it would be terrible and had been banished to the dollar bin for a reason.  I was wrong.  I enjoyed it and thought Eve did what she does best.  She shows truth no matter how disgusting, vile, negative, hateful, wonderful, idiotic, perfect, exciting, personal it is.  She has been accused of being self-involved, but this is exactly what allows her to dig deep.  Self-involved walks a fine line with self-aware and is often misidentified.  People who attend to themselves, speak powerfully from their own experience, watch their own back, love themselves, care for themselves--particularly women--will be called selfish.  Taught that selfish is wrong.  Even when discussing their own battle with a very scary, very dirty disease like cancer.

I appreciate watching Eve Ensler grow and change in the world.  I may not idolize her in the way I did as a teenager, but I do not really idolize people like that anymore (unless you are Gillian Anderson--kidding, kidding) or think that they must get "it" right all the time and every time.  That they are not fallible.  Eve shows us she is imperfect and allows us to look closely at our imperfect selves too, but she always asks us to do more and to be more aware.  There is nothing wrong with that.

"At First Women Were Reluctant to Talk"

The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
2001
Weight: 9 oz.
Method of disposal: Attempting to give it away through a social networking site. If I cannot I will move on to plan B.




Today, I am parting with my copy of The Vagina Monologues, complete with the highlighting of the fifteen year old I was when I bought it. I saw it on a shelf in the drama section at Waldenbooks when I worked there, and I bought it because of the title. I read the book that same night and loved it. It started a sort of-affair. I went to see college productions of it on a regular basis throughout the years and one time I went with my friend Sarah to see it done by Eve Ensler herself. Later, I would volunteer at an event that hosted Ms. Ensler and Jane Fonda. A whole group of us took a picture I have never seen. I remember Eve Ensler’s hand on my shoulder. Even later, I would go to Charis with a very attractive queer preacher to see her talk about her publication, The Good Body. This is yet another time when I will be disbanding a book from a complete collection of all the books written by an author.
I use to be in awe of Eve Ensler. Can you tell? There has been a gradual letting go of that awe over the last six years and now I have a dull curiosity when I see her name in print. I will continue to read about her and her work. But I also think about that initial collection where a father buys his daughter a vagina—the only intersex narrative in the book—with dismay. She has spoken with students about it for years and compromises have been worked out, but it lingers in my copy and thousands of others. I think of Jakarta, Warsaw, Kenya, and other places where The Vagina Monologues has traveled and the mixture of emotions about it expressed in the feedback—the validity of the feelings of those who loved it and those who hated it. I love talking about sex, bodies, and sexuality. I also recoil from gynocentrism, and its effects on our beliefs about gender and sex as binary systems.
There is a lot good about Eve Ensler and about The Vagina Monologues, and I will never forget my initial love for it. It is time for me to move on now. Looking at my highlights, “My Angry Vagina” was my favorite piece in the collection when I first read it. In hindsight, it is hard to imagine growing up without it. I found this book at the perfect time. It did what, I think, it was intended to do. It helped me fall in love and/or maintain my love for my genitalia—though I do not think my vagina is the truly important component of my anatomy. It pales in comparison to my clitoris, my ears, my neck, and my back.