I’m just going to say it: “The Vagina Monologues” sucks.
Why the ASUO Women’s Center insists on performing this wretched play year after year is beyond me. The horse is dead, yet they just keep beating it.
This thoroughly unremarkable play is certainly worth seeing once. But then again, so is “The Sound of Music.”
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the play, “The Vagina Monologues” is a loosely strung together series of poorly written monologues about women and their vaginas. Or maybe I should say vaginas and
their women.
The title of the play appeals to the fourth-grader in all of us who still giggles when we hear the word, “vagina.” If the play had a different title, no one would have ever heard of it. And if it didn’t piss off certain Catholic groups so much, it certainly would have fizzled out long ago.
Because of the controversy about the message of the play (or lack thereof), the fact that it’s a shallow, rambling mess of pre-packaged feminist clichés that many feminists don’t even agree with anymore (if they ever did) has almost completely escaped public discussion.
No one likes vaginas more than I do. I’m the president of the vagina fan club. But this play just sucks.
The first half is everybody giggling about the fact that an adult just said “pussy” out loud while the second half of the play is everybody crying and feeling miserable about violence against women. Did I miss the part that was supposed to be empowering?
It’s a sad commentary that the great canon of feminist plays seems to consist of one play. One! For crying out loud, let’s get some variety in here. Let’s see something other than “The Vagina Monologues.” Maybe those plays wouldn’t suck so much. From a purely philosophical perspective, I’d like to see a play that’s a bit more dialogical. “The Cunt Conversations” perhaps?
You could totally do a play about vaginas and have it be a great play. This one just doesn’t happen to be that play.
For that matter, you could do a play about penises and it could be good too. But there are those who would argue that all Western culture has been about the penis, so maybe it’s been done before. Is there a demand for a “Penis Monologues?” I doubt it. Besides, after the “Seinfeld” episode about shrinkage, there’s not much left to say.
In any case, this year’s production by the ASUO Women’s Center was particularly pitiful for a couple reasons.
First of all, the political correctness militia won a major victory against quality theater this year when the producers of this year’s play decided to typecast rather than hold auditions in response to protests of last
year’s production.
About 10 people protested the fact that women of color, plus-sized women and queer were “underrepresented” in the cast of the play. The biggest complaint was that a white student performed a monologue in which the character was African American.
In other words, these few protesters wanted the directors to engage in typecasting so extreme that it borders on illegal discrimination. A sad side effect of such “inclusive” exclusivity is that it eliminates acting talent from the cast selection process.
Also, keep in mind that the original cast for “The Vagina Monologues” was a middle-aged white woman doing all the parts — all of them!
Even more ridiculous than this policy of typecasting is the hypocritical results it achieves.
“It’s all about giving a voice to people who’ve never had the opportunity to speak up before,” director Felicia Perez said in a press release.
That’s a nice line. Except when the cast was announced, the sentiment proved to be woefully hollow. Topping the list of cast members was Eugene mayor Kitty Piercy. A University vice-president, several faculty members and the ASUO vice-president were also cast.
They said they wanted to make it more democratic and accessible to the common woman. But at the end of the day, they sold out to get a big name and cater to women who are already in a privileged position to have their voices heard.
They didn’t democratize “The Vagina Monologues.” They didn’t give a voice to the underrepresented. And they certainly didn’t cast the common woman. All they did was take “The Vagina Monologues” away from the good actresses.

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