If someone asked me what my vagina would wear, I’m not sure what I would reply. Where I come from, “nice girls” don’t discuss “down there” or anything else related to their labia, clitoris and vulva. In fact, many “nice girls” I know couldn’t pin the clitoris on the vagina with their eyes wide open.
Luckily, the 16 Oberlin ladies who presented The Vagina Monologues weren’t concerned with society’s conceptions of propriety. Beginning with a discourse on pubic hair (“you cannot love a vagina unless you love hair”) and ending with a raffle for a homemade, anatomically correct, vagina cake, the show was honest and real.
“I was worried about vaginas. I was worried about what we think about vaginas, and even more worried that we don’t think about them,” self-described “vagina-lady” Eve Ensler writes at the beginning of The Vagina Monologues. Distilled from years of interviews, The Vagina Monologues is a collection of stories from women eager and reluctant, young and old, gay and straight. Their alternately heartbreaking and comic experiences do not represent every woman’s relationship with her vagina, but they are familiar to many and hopefully enlightening to the rest.
A listener outside Wilder Main on Feb. 14 might have missed the finer points of The Vagina Monologues, but certainly would have heard the audience chanting “cunt” along with sophomore Katharine Cacace and perhaps the vivacious moaning of junior Lily Matini.

A more subdued piece, “My Vagina Was My Village,” was exquisitely presented by senior Anna Ruth. Rhythmic and allegorical, Ruth’s monologue conveyed the intense anguish of a woman repeatedly raped by soldiers with immense dignity and candor. “Vagina facts” were interspersed throughout the production to provide introduction to certain monologues. “20,000 to 70,000 women were being raped in the middle of Europe in 1993 as a systematic tactic of war, and no one was doing anything to stop it.”
Since the inauguration of V-Day in 1998, countless celebrities and college students have presented monologues ranging from “My Angry Vagina” to “The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy” addressing issues as diverse as tampons (“a dry wad of fucking cotton”) and rape as a war strategy. While the tone of individual monologues varied from intensely sensual to apologetic and embarrassed, V-Day’s major purpose is to prevent violence against women. To that end, the proceeds from Oberlin’s 2002 production were donated to local women’s shelters and the V-Day fund for women in Afghanistan.
So what would my vagina wear? I’m not telling, but at least I’m thinking about it.