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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
"Eve Ensler Wants to Save the World," a recent Times Magazine article on the playwright and activist declared in its title, before going on to disparage her for, among other things, having been moved to tears by telling the story of a Bosnian rape victim during a recent benefit performance of "The Vagina Monologues." Ensler's 1996 show took private parts public in rather spectacular fashion, and has become a well-documented worldwide phenomenon. The paperback of the script is in its twenty-second printing; HBO aired a filmed version a few weeks ago; and such is the extent of the show's penetration into the culture that at any given moment someone somewhere is sitting on a stool on a stage and saying,"My vagina's angry. It is. It's pissed off. My vagina's furious and it needs to talk." I am not among those who have been galvanized by "The Vagina Monologues." I saw Ensler perform it five years ago, and I found a lot of it cutesy-wootsy, such as the bit where she recited women's answers to the question "If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?" (mine would wear earplugs, so it wouldn't have to listen to such dopey lines of inquiry), and I found some of it moving, such as the story of the woman who had had a sexual experience in 1953...
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