The Vagina Monologues

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A controversial play written by Eve Ensler, The Vagina Monologues debuted in 1996 on Broadway, at Westside Theater. It's pretty much Exactly What It Says on the Tin, being a bunch of monologues that connect the vagina to different themes, such as love, rape, sex, menstruation, genital mutilation, birth, masturbation, orgasm, and slang terms for the part. Typically, one new piece gets added every year, but here are some of the more famous monologues:

  • I Was 12; My Mother Slapped Me: A piece all about periods.
  • My Angry Vagina: Rant against tampons, douches, and OB/GYN's.
  • My Vagina Was My Village: A collection of interviews from women in Bosnia that were in rape camps.
  • The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could: The most controversial out of the set. A 13-year-old girl who was violently raped by a man as a child is seduced a much-older woman and she sees the latter experience as positive, saying "if it was rape, it was a good rape." The age was changed to 16 after the most severe criticisms were made.
  • Reclaiming "Cunt": Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy: A story about a lesbian dominatrix. Performers of this piece often save it for last in the performance and pretend to orgasm near the end; they claim to be having a triple orgasm.
  • Because He Liked to Look At It: Story about a woman who hated her pubic area until she met a man who loved it.
  • I Was There in the Room: Eve Ensler's personal account of her granddaughter's birth.
  • Under the Burqa: Added to the original performance in 2003. It's about women in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban.

It has since become the cornerstone of the "V-Day" movement, which aims to raise awareness of rape and violence against women. As such, the play is frequently performed by colleges every year around Valentines Day.

Clean the sand out of your vagina and tell us the tropes this play uses!