Vaginal politics: Tensions and possibilities in The Vagina Monologues

We are feminists in our 50s who first became activists in the women's health movement when we were in our 20s. In 2002 we performed in The Vagina Monologues and participated in the 2002 V-Day College Campaign to end violence against women. We use our experiences “then” in the women's health movement and “now” in the College Campaign as a lens through which to introduce a “worry” about “a culture of vaginas” that the play's author, Eve Ensler does not adequately address. Our focus is the differing ways that the body, and in particular the vagina, has been politicized in these two feminist eras. Our concern relates to what we see as the unproblematized tension between a celebration of the pleasures of the body and the politics that underlie the play and the movement it has spawned. We worry whether or not our sense of disquiet and recognition signals both a recapitulation of 1970s women's health politics and their limitations and a failure to learn from critiques of this form of “globalized” feminism.