The Vajayjay Monologues

Last week, the School of Culture and Performance (or whatever) put on The Vagina Monologues. Ryder noticed that it wasn't either week surrounding Valentine's Day, which isn't in keeping with Eve Ensler's seemingly excessive performance rules (apparently she dictates costumes and set and everything? I mean, not that I don't have any understanding of artistic ownership, but let yr frickin' baby grow up, Ensler). Anyway, that's a sidenote. The important thing is what I thought of it. Which was considerably less than I was expecting to.

TVM was quite a formative part of my formative years - I bought a copy of the book from Fopp for about £3 when I was thirteen or so and, for some reason, was pretty interested in it. I especially liked My Short Skirt, and the monologue about all the different types of moans. When I was nineteen and in my gap year some local feminists were putting on a showing, which I auditioned for and got a role in - due to some fuckery, which I won't go into because it's tedious and beaurocratic and long ago and also I'm still a bit cross about it, I didn't end up being in it after all (N.B. this experience is not accountable for any ill-feeling I have towards the play, just FYI).

Then comes Friday night. Corin and I went alongside (not really with - we missed the preceding Old Bar gathering) the feminist society. I was quite looking forward to it, since it'd been present in my consciousness for some time but I'd not seen it before. Then it started and I felt immediately out of place, like I should have been catapulted into the past but actually it was the present and it was actually a bit embarrassing. I mean, some bits were good - the woman who performed the moaning monologue was especially good - but overall it was quite shambolic, which I think was more to do with the script than the actors. It seems to aim to represent women of several different backgrounds, but in this attempt it only really succeeds in othering those who are not straight, white, and middle-class. The attempts to represent queerness where patchy - as before, the moaning monologue was done well, but the woman talking about her seduction by an older woman as a teenager just wasn't convincing, and I don't think that's just because of the performance. (Also, PROBLEMATIC - if that monologue were about a teenage girl's experiences with an older man it wouldn't have been 'acceptable', so I suppose women just can't be sexually predatory or abusive in the same way.) Furthermore, the intermissions of images of acid burn victims in Asia was not made congruent with the rest of the pieces - which mainly amounted to middle-class women voicing concerns - which completely othered them. The assumption seemed to be that these women *should* be in a society like ours, that they would want that. I'm not saying that many people would *want* to be in societies in which 'honour' killings etc are accepted, but our presumed superiority was all over the whole thing.

Also, and I think most importantly, I think something like TVM just doesn't do now what it may have done (or sought to do) when it first came about. Most women in the room were feminists, most women I know know where their clitoris is, and probably more know that they are worthy of liberation. I think we're living in a post-Vagina Monologues state of consciousness, and I don't think it has much political weight, particularly since it is only accessible to people of a very specific group, and fails to offer that group much in the way of feminist realisation that is inaccessible anywhere else.

douche

This week (slash by Friday at 4pm) I have to write an essay about the problem of 'female beauty' in Alexander Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' and another essay about the relationship between adulthood and childhood in Songs of Innocence and Experience (I think - I have yet to plan this essay so it is, helpfully, subject to change). So far today I have set my alarm for eleven, woken up at one, faffed around since one, and continued to faff by writing this post. I need to be in uni by quarter to seven at the latest this evening to be in charge of a FemSoc film night. Afterwards I will probably eschew continued social contact on the grounds of work then come home and faff around then go to bed late. Tomorrow I have two lectures and a seminar for which I need to do a buttload of reading. The day after I have CBT, which is early, but draining; the following day the English department is on strike, which is nice, but makes Friday hell because I have to do the lectures/seminars I missed as well as the ones I am scheduled for. One of the ones I am scheduled for requires that I read Letters written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark beforehand. Once again, I hate myself for leaving everything too late and sacrificing my creative freedom for what only amounts to a grotesque lack of discipline. Obviously I am doing nothing to help the matter by whining on here. Argghhh. ARG.