It's a little odd, but what I love most about the Vagina Monologues is what it seemed to receive the most criticism for today in class--that it talks about intimate, personal things...VAGINAS! (hehe!) Perhaps it is partly because I come from a VERY small rural town where the idea of sex education could basically be summed up by three words: "Don't have sex." I was raised to be afraid of sex, afraid of possible emotional ramifications and, of course, afraid of town's taboo attitude toward unwanted pregnancy. Our local parish priest explained to all of the young teenage girls that young men always want to have sex, but it is the role of the unmarried female to stop him. (Yikes!) Thus, I grew up sitting cross-legged and never wanting to look--never wanting to see what the tampon instructional illustrations made look so ugly and uncivilized. Hearing the Vagina Monologues for the first time several years ago made me feel empowered. For the first time, I felt in control of my body and comforted that so many other women had exercised the same control to learn about their body and become comfortable with it, celebrate it in whatever (no matter how bizarre) way they wanted. To me, the Vagina Monologues is not about violating the privacy of something that is supposed to be sacred to oneself, but about celebrating that part of our bodies--and not because that part is the only thing to women or because a person needs a vagina to be a woman but because it is probably the most "historically oppressed" body part. Don't you think? I think that the Vagina Monologues offers women a chance to share, laugh about, and reclaim a piece of our anatomy which has often been degraded. I dig it.