Vagina Monologs

   I have seen the theatrical version of the Vagina Monologs twice. My reaction to it was that of shock, not so much at its subject matter but at how much I enjoyed the performance. Yes the subject matter was out of the ordinary but I feel that it was used in much the same way as any other controversial subject matter is used to stem interest. Like for example when they first started saying, "bitch" on cable television. Yes we all watched and where like, "Can they say that on TV?" and yes it adds a sensational excitement to whatever is using it but because of examples like this I feel that I was better prepared for this particular instance of it; that and the name of the play kind of set it up to be in that sensational realm. I was surprised however by what I learned. I had no idea that there was such a negative outlook for females in regard to their own anatomy. As a man I am in "regular contact" with my "manhood." I mean even if I wanted to avoid it, it would be impossible. Women do not have this same experience. But even given that I was surprised to learn that many women have never even looked at their vaginas and that it seemed taboo to talk about them amongst other women. I grew up playing football all the way though high school and "locker room" chat was regular. Again in my singular experience men commonly talk about their penises in many different realms of conversation. As far as attending the play went, I did feel like an "outsider" being there as one of the few males in the audience. I think that many men feel that it is "not for men" and I attribute this to the name of the play. I think that this is something we should avoid. On its face our performance should not appeal to only one group of people. However I have heard conversation about how different monologs have been left out of the Vagina Monologs to stop from offending some people. I think this should be avoided as much as possible in our performance as well. When you begin to "water-down" your message to appeal to a larger audience you start to lose the message as well. But getting back on topic. I read an analysis by Alyssa Reiser about the Vagina Monologues and she criticizes the lack of certain experiences. For instance there are some monologues about child birth but there was not one about women who can not conceive. This I feel was more of an oversight than an omission but I think that we should try to keep an eye out for "big ticket" items like this that might be left out of our performance. A good way to do this is to look at different aspects of whatever problem we are addressing, like childbirth and the inability to conceive. All in all I thought that the play was eye opening and I had a good time. It brought up and answered questions and I feel that doing our STEM project this way could be very beneficial for our audience.