Awkward, Important Things

I was in a play once. I forget that I was in it because I told maybe three people about it, didn't go to a single rehearsal after I got the part, and never spoke about it again when it was over. At the time, I was embarrassed by the name, and now I'm embarrassed that I was embarrassed.  

I'm about to be in it again, so I think it's time to talk about it. 

In my Junior year, the campus feminist group sent round an email asking people to audition for a spring play. I thought it would be perfect for me because I am a feminist (because woman are spectacular and equal human beings who are subjected to insane amounts of violence and bullshit, and why wouldn't you be a feminist?) and because I like to act. Or I had liked to act, five years ago in a different country and a different life. The play was called The Vagina Monologues, and I was embarrassed by the name.

Actually, I was embarrassed by the word "vagina." Which, now, seems ludicrous. But maybe because we teach young girls to use any other word besides vagina, I came to believe that vagina was a dirty word. You certainly don't dedicate a play to it. Now I know that if you cannot use the word vagina then you shouldn't be using it (I'm looking at you Anna in fifty shades of awful). 

I chose the monologue called The Vagina Workshop because the only stage directions were "British accent", which at the time I could still do, and because it scared me. It was about a woman who had never had an orgasm before, who knew very little about her vagina really, and I had to spend ten minutes talking about going to vagina workshop and discovering myself. Ten minutes, by myself, in which I discussed "my" vagina and orgasms in detail -- horrifying when you think I was scared of the word vagina. 

But the script was hilarious, in a smart, surprising, brilliant way. I wanted the challenge of making an audience laugh while doing something I was terrified of.

So I auditioned, got the part, and then didn't go to a single rehearsal;  I still wasn't sure that I would be able to do it right up until five minutes before opening night. But I did, for two nights in a row! People laughed in all the right places; I didn't throw up; and I walked away feeling empowered.

I walked away really loving and appreciating women, and feeling like I, as a woman, was powerful. I could own all the things that I had been taught were shameful. I could be beautiful, and not because men liked to look at me, but because I was proud of my femininity and my sexuality and all the things that made me a woman.

All the monologues are a mixture of humorous, devastating and liberating. They're all powerful; they're all honest. There was one in particular that bothered me at the time. It was called My Angry Vagina, and the lady who acted it was really, really angry. I liked to pretend I was worried she'd alienate the audience, but really she was just making me uncomfortable. I'd heard so much about angry feminists, I wanted to be a soft, appeasing "cant-we-all-get-along-don't-you-see-how-reasonable-I-am" feminist.

Which is ridiculous, because I basically wanted to be less human. There are experiences that women are subjected to that make me angry not because I am a woman, but because I am a human being. It's important to talk about the things that make us uncomfortable so that we stop accepting them as commonplace. 

Being in The Vagina Monologues was an important, awkward (at the time) thing for me, because I got to claim all the parts of my femininity, my sexuality, as my own. It's about not being afraid to be a woman, even though so many parts of the world teach us that we are dangerous, liable to be hurt, and to be ashamed. It's a small celebration of the power inherent in women every time it's performed, and I'm glad it exists for all those girls, who like me, were afraid of the word vagina.

In a month I'm performing an entirely new monologue, based on a mother's experience watching her daughter give birth. Which should be realllll interesting for me to attempt to portray.