Ensler expands: from body part to body image
Show explores women's fixation with physique
Eve Ensler, the writer and activist who created the internationally acclaimed ''The Vagina Monologues," has created a new one-woman show, ''The Good Body," in which she talks about women's obsession with body image. She spoke to the Globe by phone from Toronto, her 16th stop on the tour.
Q: With ''The Vagina Monologues" you got people all over the world saying a word that few felt comfortable saying. Is ''The Good Body" as daring as that?
A: Talking about your stomach or body is actually more dangerous than talking about vaginas; it's more personal. There's a gritty, cellular shame around it. When you start to uncover what's inside there, there's a lot of mystery, ambiguity, self-hatred, loneliness.
Q: Why the focus on stomachs, instead of breasts, which seem to be more of an obsession for American women?
A: I focus on my stomach --my self-hatred, my obsession with my not-so-flat, post-40s stomach. As a radical feminist, I'm still trying to figure out why I'm still thinking about it. It's much more my story; a more personal narrative runs through it. And a journey. Two of the monologues are based on real women. The rest are literary creations with seeds of truth.
Q: Will celebrities eventually do ''The Good Body," as they did with ''The Vagina Monologues"? How does your radical feminism jibe with having the show performed by celebrities, who may well have had the plastic surgery your show rails against?
A: If a woman wants to come and do it, isn't it saying she wants change in her life? I'm open to the fact that people can change all the time. In ''The Vagina Monologues," conservative Republican women would say they hate the show. But then they'd come see it, and leave saying [explicative]. I try not to judge people. We're all caught here, by patriarchy.
Q: What is our alienation from, or hatred of, our bodies costing us?
A: It costs us everything. The reason I did the tour, particularly in North America, is thinking about how these are the most dangerous times I've lived through. We're involved in this ungodly war that was launched based on lies and deceptions; there's eroding women's reproductive rights, increasing global warming. But women are fixing their thighs, their noses, dieting, rather than saying 'I'm OK' and taking that energy and fixing the world.
Q: How has doing the show changed you?
A: I grew up in a violent family, where I was told all the time that I was bad, ugly, and stupid. When I began the play, I was always struggling to convince myself and the world that I was good. And it's over. Not happening anymore. Whatever the alchemy of the show has been, I don't feel I need to prove that anymore.
Q: How do you hope the show will affect audience members?
A: What I would hope is that women -- and men, who also have body issues -- would look at their bodies differently, see that their bodies are generous and that they serve them, rather than just obsess about the vanity piece of it. My body has shown up for eight shows a week for the last 16 weeks and sustains a high level of energy. What an act of generosity! If women would make the decision to love their bodies, they could get on with a powerful vision. 