Student provides critique of Vagina Monologues production

To the Editors:

I loved this year’s production of The Vagina Monologues. It’s the third such production I’ve attended and probably the best yet at Oberlin; it included some amazing performances. My thanks to the entire cast and crew. While I remain an enthusiastic fan of the show and supporter of V-Day, however, I do have a few concerns about the show itself (rather than this production) that I would provide the community some food for thought.
1) Use of the word “vagina” in the show often properly refers to the vulva; that is, the term of female internal genitalia is used in the show for both internal and external genitalia. Of course, many women and men confuse the terms everyday, and its use in The Vagina Monologues must reflect in part its greater familiarity to most American audiences. Nevertheless, since the show highlights the aesthetic inadequacy of this term for something so wonderful, the almost total absence of the much prettier word “vulva” is disappointing.
2) While the evocative monologue “Hair” undoubtedly speaks to many women’s experiences of being pressured or coerced into shaving their pubic hair to please partners, in the absence of a balancing voice it seems to strongly suggest that no woman would actually want to shave her pubic hair. Needless to say, some do, and not necessarily due to some kind of internalized oppression. The show does carefully point out that the burka itself is not inherently oppressive and bad — but wearing it against your will is. “Hair” deserves the same kind of caveat.
3) Ditto thong underwear. I *like* thong underwear.
4) While last weekend’s production omitted two bits that were particularly offensive to the Intersex Society of North America (and the national V-Day organization has officially endorsed ISNA’s mission), the “Vagina Fact” about female genital mutilation is still presented in such a way as to suggest that this sort of thing only goes on in other countries. In fact, while the procedures are far safer than in many countries, American doctors still regularly mutilate infants’ genitals when they are deemed to be cosmetically unsatisfactory.
While I’m unfamiliar with the restrictions placed by the author on productions of The Vagina Monologues, I believe that it’s the sort of play that lends itself to innovation, amendment, and insertion of new material with each production, and I hope that next year’s Oberlin production will be even better.

—Harper Jean Tobin
College senior