The Justice

Media Credit: David Sheppard-Brick Desiree Murphy '10 performs the monologue "My Angry Vagina."

Media Credit: David Sheppard-Brick 'Vagina Monologues' director Ashley Sauerhof '09 and head coordinator Amanda DiSanto '09 deliver an introduction to the show as the cast of 30 actors, all female undergraduates, looks on.

It's the most wonderful time of the year again - the time when students gather together in laughter and tears to view an amazing show about something deep, mysterious and amazing: vaginas.

The Vagina Monologues, or "Vag Mons" as they are fondly called by some students, were performed this weekend by an amazing cast of women who shared stories based on a series of interviews by author Eve Ensler. The Monologues covered everything from pubic hair to forced prostitution, orgasms to rape. The audience laughed at Michelle Miller's '11 story about a workshop at which she discovered her vagina and cried at Hannah Richman '10 and Asa Bhuiyan's '11 heartbreaking account of a girl who had the sanctuary of her vagina invaded in a brutal assault. They reclaimed the word "c- - -" with Lexi Kriss '11 and learned about the different moans a woman makes with Kaamila Mohamed '11.

At Brandeis, the Monologues are more than a show; they're a charity. Each year the Vagina Club donates 100 percent of the profit from the show to various causes: 45 percent goes to the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, 45 percent to REACH Beyond Domestic Violence and 10 percent to V-Day, whose spotlight campaign in 2009 is "Women and Girls of the Congo."

There is quite honestly nothing negative that can be said about any one of the 30 participants of this year's Monologues. It takes a great deal of courage to step onstage and tell a story about something as dark and personal as sexual assault or as enlightening as a first orgasm, and while the stories the cast told were not their own, they represent the stories of women across the entire world. Under the coordination of Amanda DiSanto '09 and Ashley Sauerhof '09, the women of the Monologues told a series of stories connected only by a common word-vagina-and wove it into a moving performance that won't be forgotten.

The intention of the Monologues is to raise awareness about women's issues. "We forget our vaginas," Ensler writes. And it's true. Until something happens to them, women often forget that their vaginas exist. And don't even get started on men-they think about vaginas, all right, but they don't think about vaginas. In truth, no one really thinks about vaginas. But the Monologues do, reminding women and men alike that the word "vagina" is not a curse, a swear or an unpleasant infection. Vaginas, the Monologues remind us, are beautiful things. They are sources of life and pain, of beauty and confusion, of identity and triumph.

Also, for the record, the Monologues would like to remind you that the clitoris has twice the number of nerve endings as the penis. Just a little public service announcement.

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