This is an open, brief, and honest love letter.
You could even call it a love declaration. A love proclamation! It’s a love message written in smoke letters by a spiraling airplane.
This is a love letter to the Tufts Vagina Monologues.
I don’t intend for this to be an article detailing the many marvels of the Tufts Vagina Monologues team. There have been countless Daily articles, Facebook events, posters, and campaigns to detail the sheer force of the team’s effort. With a pair of ears or eyes, it was impossible to ignore the work of the many students who endeavored to bring the performance back to Tufts last week after a three year hiatus; flash mobbing and vagina screaming, these brave souls refused to let anyone go unaware of their ambitions to stage Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues. I’ll let you read their lips: they were incredible.
I’d rather take a moment to celebrate the bravery with which two Tufts seniors, Stella Benezra and Dani Moscovitch, undertook the ordeal of casting, directing, producing, and promoting an event that had fallen by the Tufts wayside. Generating hype in all the right places and recruiting a crew of supporters and performers, the performance became larger than itself. It became a talking point, a conversation that resurged from time to time. “It’s coming. Are you?” was plastered all over campus, reminding us of the impending explosion that was the Vagina Monologues. It was effective; we noticed, and came.
The play itself is not without flaws; written many years ago, it has fielded criticism of being outdated or irrelevant to the struggles of modern vagina-owners. It is a representation, rather than a reality, but this is the challenge of any performance with an intended message. Regardless of the qualms, the production was imbued with eagerness, devotion, and complete dedication to a worthy cause in such a sensitive manner that the obstacles were met with grace. Let the critics have their own column, because it has no place here.
The ladies of the Tufts Vagina Monologues brought such strong vagina love to each of their performances that the love is catching all over campus. Shy of screaming VAGINA in the middle of classes, those that attended the performances and felt its resonance carried the pride with them. It’s a new feeling for some, to rid yourself of a shame that has never been explicitly articulated, but it’s a relief. It’s a rebirth.
This column isn’t about love, per se. This is about appreciating an event that allows self-identifying women of every walk of life to love themselves, and love a part of themselves that is often shamed. It’s an honest thank you for doing Tufts a real service, and for doing it with real grace and skill. Tufts Vagina Monologues, I gotta love you.
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