Searching for Ensler's 'Good Body'

Vagina Monologues creator Eve Ensler appeared at the Annenberg Center with her new play The Good Body last night. After the performance, The Daily Pennsylvanian sat down with the renowned activist.

The Daily Pennsylvanian: Do you feel that the public's perception of you and your work is how you'd like it to be?

Eve Ensler: I try not to worry about the public's perception of me. I just do what I do. It's really none of my business. I just try to stay focused on what I have to say and how I have to say it, and the rest is up to the people to define.

DP: What do you think influences the way we feel about our bodies the most? The media, family or ourselves?

EE: Our mothers. Our mothers get influenced by the culture and by the media that our mothers then relay to us. If our mothers love their bodies, we will love our bodies. If our mothers hate their bodies and their mothers hate our bodies, we will hate our bodies.

DP: How much self-control do you think we have over that?

EE: I think if you have a mother that loves her body and loves your body, the chances are you will grow up to love your body.

DP: You premiered this play on Brijuni Island in Croatia, and you have worked with abused women in Bosnia. What kind of reception have you had in these countries? Do you find that in these cultures it is harder to talk about these issues openly?

EE: I feel like Croatia is my second home. ... I had more publicity in Croatia than any place in the world. Literally, it is my second home. The play has been performed in Bosnia, in Sarajevo. In Zagreb it's run for a long time. I've done my other play Necessary Targets in Sarajevo and in Zagreb. They celebrated V-day all over the former Yugoslavia. It's truly one of my favorite parts of the world.

DP: You work in developing countries with women's rights. What experiences stand out the most in your mind as having affected you deeply?

EE: I think that our work in Afghanistan was really profound. I would say that our work in Africa, we opened a first V-day safehouse for girls. [Activist] Agnes Pareyio opened a house to help girls from being mutilated when they go to school, to not be forced into marriage. That was incredibly profound. I work with [Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan] in Afghanistan, working with women to open orphanages and hospital works for women under the Taliban.

We are doing a lot of work in Iraq right now, opening safehouses for women so they won't be honor-killed or beaten or raped. ... It's incredible, incredible.

DP: You mentioned women who you think are very close to true liberation. Who are these women? Do we know them? What is it about them that's helped them almost get there ahead of the pack?

EE: We call each other the vagina warriors. They are women and men who have experienced terrible situations, and rather than perpetuating it on other people, they actually grieve it, ... and then they devote their lives to making sure it doesn't happen to anyone else.

And I think that there are thousands of these people on the planet and that they are very free and very liberated and you couldn't stop them if you try because they have to do the work that they are doing because this work is transforming their own suffering, and I think that they are free. It's real people who interest me, who I've met all over the planet, who are teachers, who are mothers who have found a way to really take what's been done to them and and not portray it on other people.

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