Sharing the Stage. Woman Point of View

There has been a lot of email in the wake of our nation-wide “Take Back the Date” ad that ran on Valentine’s Day.

No, I haven’t taken in a performance of the Vagina Monologues yet. On this Valentine’s Day, I was busy. I had a date. But so as not to be out of the loop, I have read the play from cover to cover. When I was done, I put the book down and thought to myself, “so what?”

I think what’s important to note here is that the Vagina Monologues is first and foremost a play. It’s a form of artistic expression. Much the same way that the Brooklyn Museum of Modern Art in New York City ran a controversial art show featuring a painting of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung, the Vagina Monologues is of the same mold. It’s art. Plain and simple. To some it’s liberating, in fact, down-right empowering. Fine. Great. To others it is offensive and demeaning, championing their vaginas in such a public forum.

My argument is this: If after taking in a performance of the Vagina Monologues, it makes you want to get up in the morning and be a better person, to volunteer at a battered woman’s shelter, to help end the horrific occurrence of domestic violence then I want to belt out a rip-roaring, “Amen!”

But if you are in the uncomfortable camp, where you find nothing wrong with your body parts, but you just don’t want to celebrate them on stage … then you shouldn’t be labeled as having some sort of weird hang-up. “Oh … she’s got issues,” I believe is the familiar refrain.

Here’s why we published our Cupid ad. This past summer we released the results of a groundbreaking survey (see our “Factoids” section for the Executive Summary). It was an 18-month long labor of love in which we investigated the attitudes and norms of college women today when it comes to dating, hooking-up, sex, and the opposite sexcall. The results? They were quite intriguing. These women were telling us in substantial numbers that they want to know what’s happened to the date—the whole concept of going out on a good ‘ole date.

Well, we wondered too. Just like Eve Ensler wanted to stop violence against women and thus she wrote the Vagina Monologues, we wanted to resurrect the concept of the date. Our “Take Back the Date” campaign was unveiled on Valentine’s Day in eleven different student papers across the country.

While the “Take Back the Date” campaign is not the answer, it is a start. Just like the Vagina Monologues should not own the market on how women want to express themselves on Valentine’s Day, we’re not purporting to have the answers to every relationship woe. What we can safely say is this: hooking up on college campuses is occurring at an exponential rate. What a barrel of laughs it would be if everyone were into being a “swinger.” But they’re not. Disenchantment abounds at an equally high rate.

We happen to think there’s enough room on Valentine’s Day to share the stage with the Vagina Monologues. We would hope that the supporters of the play would agree.