Author: Aidan Lewis
I am sorry to report that, unlike many Oxy students on campus over the weekend, I didn’t attend Friday’s performance of “The Vagina Monologues.” As someone who didn’t attend, it would be pretentious of me to criticize the actual event; “The Vagina Monologues” may very well have been an inspired, inspiring, and powerful performance. But I’ll never know, because months of offensive, degrading, and tactless advertising sufficiently deterred me from going anywhere near the show.
A recent email sent on behalf of the Center for Gender Equity claims that one of the aims of “The Vagina Monologues” is to “work against the taboo and negative stigmas associated with the vagina and female sexuality.” Why then, may I ask, did the event’s advertisers achieve something completely antithetical to that end? I’m not the only person on campus who is thoroughly disgusted with provocative sexual taglines, a lack of taste and discretion, gaudy costumes of genitalia, and overreaching sexual synecdoche. Regardless of the performance itself, the advertising tactics for “The Vagina Monologues” totally subverted a supposedly feminist message.
To be fair, I’ll concede that the advertising this semester has been much less suggestive and vulgar than it was in the Fall. The Oxy Digest last semester included phrases such as “Do you like oral… performance?” and egregious rhymes like “COME COME COME/ IN ALL SENSES OF THE WORD/ NOT JUST SOME/ ALL ARE PREFERRED!” While this semester’s advertising might have been a marginal improvement, it was hardly free of shock value and provocation. I cringed when I read a notice announcing that there was “Still space to see USC vaginas.”
I have no objection to the word “vagina” (or the organ), or with breaking down “negative stigmas.” But the event’s advertisers chose to revert to the same sexist, objectifying portrayals of women that are rampant throughout society and the media. Can we only speak of women in the context of sex appeal? Must we eroticize everyone and everything? Isn’t it possible for us to discuss gender without reducing females to eye candy? Again, I can’t criticize the event itself, but the angle of the advertising only solidified my belief that we haven’t progressed as far as we would like to think. If we still can’t escape from that narrow, inequitable model of femininity, where women are consigned to the fate of being gawked at, how far are we really?
Part of the problem was the overuse and overextension of sexual synecdoche. The advertising conceptually replaced women with vaginas, and did this so consistently that it reduced a woman’s value to her genitalia. One of my female friends posted a fairly accurate drawing of the female anatomy alongside other artwork commemorating “V-Day.” She included a label that read something along the lines of “There is more to the woman than this.” The picture was torn down; apparently someone didn’t agree.
The ultimate travesty of feminism was making a volunteer walk around the Quad and Cooler wearing a giant vagina costume. There’s a pronounced difference between accustoming people to an idea and inuring them to it, and this was the grossest case of shock tactics. To gain any respect for a subject, it’s necessary to approach it at some basic level of discretion. The kind of illustrative introduction we received only served to inspire distaste and bad jokes-which, by the way, I heard throughout the week from nearly every other guy I encountered. There was ample conjecture among the male population as to what kind of reaction we would elicit if we paraded around in penis costumes.
I wish I could say that I attended “The Vagina Monologues” and found that it recognized women with the respect and dignity they deserve. I also wish that I had heard something informative and challenging amidst all the hype. But I didn’t, and I’m not likely to attend a showing of “The Vagina Monologues” until its advertisers live up to their alleged standard of feminism.
Aidan Lewis is a first-year ECLS major. He can be reached at alewis@oxy.edu.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
