The Vagina Monologues Analyzation

        Rather than writing a novel, Eve Ensler wrote The Vagina Monologues as verse to be performed. I believe this is relevant to the central theme of all the monologues in celebrating femininity. When writing such work to be performed, rather than quietly read to one's self, Ensler forces her audiences to be exposed to the naked vagina and react to it immediately, in front of other audiences, also reacting. I believe Ensler takes on a sort of "protestant" stance on women's oppression through her explicit depictions of intimate woman's parts and the universal stories that accompany them in each monologue. For example, in the piece "Hair," she uses very vivid words that almost disturb the reader, such as puffy and prickly, to shed light on the hypocrisy of an unkempt man demanding his wife be shaved or else he go outside the marriage for sexual satisfaction. As a male reader, I realized I slipped right into the theme's Ensler was discussing. I found myself hiding my book in my lap, or making sure its title was never exposed. To further accompany the literature, I even looked up a few of the performances on Youtube, making sure of course my volume was down or I had headphones in, so that no one thought I was being perverted or strange watching women discuss the beauty of their own parts. I even found myself much too proud or perhaps even embarrassed to see the performance being put on at my own school, despite the relevance of the play. As I thought more of it, I realized Ensler arrived at a valid point. All humans, regardless of gender, has some sort of part we consider humbled or private, and to deny it, or be embarrassed of it is silly and is to deny the fact that we are human. And to discourage the celebration of one's own or even the opposite gender's masculinity or femininity is just as oppressive as discouraging an entire gender as a whole. Ensler made me really connect to her work, because I wasn't only analyzing what she wrote as I read it, as I often would, but I had inadvertently stumbled into the themes she was discussing and became not only part of her audience but a part of her message as well.