Eve Ensler, the Obie-Award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues and the creator of V-Day (the V is for valentine, vagina, and victory), a global movement to stop violence against women and girls, recently opened her new solo show. Ensler’s Broadway debut, The Good Body, tackles one of the most difficult issues for women to address their bodies. Never stopping to pause, Ensler’s mission “to address, acknowledge, and most importantly, do something about the way women are treated, and the way they treat themselves” is a timely, courageous, and necessary endeavor. Here, Ensler shares some insight with HL&S about V-Day and her new body-conscious act.

Melissa: What is V-Day for you?

Eve: V-Day grew out of the Vagina Monologues. As I traveled around the country performing the show, so many women who came to see the show would line up to talk to me afterward. I thought they were going to tell me how wonderful their sex lives were, etc., but instead they told me about how they had been beaten, raped, incested, or abused. And it became truly overwhelming. I decided that I was going to do something to stop violence against women, not to keep space for it, but to end it. In 1997, I got women together in New York for the first V-Day; it really launched this movement to end violence against women.

Melissa: How many V-Day benefit events will take place this year?

Eve: This year, there will be 2,300 productions in 60 countries, 1,120 cities/towns, and 710 colleges. At the end of this year we will have raised close to $30 million.

Melissa: Of course all of these performances were monumental in their own way, but were any monumental for other reasons?

Eve: There are different victories. When we filled out Madison Square Garden in 2001 that was pretty amazing; watching the show open for the first time in Pakistan was pretty incredible; we just saw an amazing V-Day in Iceland, the members of parliament and the President were present; seeing Bosnian young women perform it, and having it be a multi-ethnic cast. I think that women are extraordinary. I think that Vagina-Warriors take things and make them happen because they need to make them happen.

Melissa: In your new play, The Good Body, you write: “In the midst of war in Iraq, in a time of escalating global terrorism, when civil liberties are disappearing as fast as the ozone layer, when one out of three women in the world will be beaten or raped in her lifetime, why write a play about my stomach?” Well, why?

Eve: I think that the pre-occupation of women with fixing, hiding, dieting, burying, mutilating, reducing, and tightening their bodies is the greatest distraction, and is really keeping us from directing our attention to what really is in great need of transformation on this planet. I believed that if I really got to the core of why I was doing this to myself, that maybe it would help other women get to the core of it so maybe they could move on, so they could really get to serving the world, running the world, and focusing on the issues that are really crucial in the world.

Melissa: During your interviews for The Good Body, what surprised you the most?

Eve: It is just amazing to see the variety of forms our self-hatred takes. How each woman had a very particular part of her body; there is a very particular reason historically in her life why she hates that particular part of her body and spends most of her life trying to fix or change it. And, it is always one specific part. How one woman said to me, ‘I have no issues with my body,’ and I said, ‘You don’t?’ and she said, ‘Well, my face but that isn’t my body.’ It’s as if they’ve [women]been given their own little country called their body, which they get to tyrannize, clean up, or control while they lose all sight of the world.

For more information on The Good Body, Vagina Monologues, and V-Day, visit vday.org.

By Melissa B. Williams

Latest posts by Healing Lifestyles & Spas Team (see all)