This past weekend, I was in a production of the Vagina Monologues at our school for the second year. It’s a great experience and I had a fabulous time doing it.
Anyways, during the Vagina Monologues, something happened and I’m still not entirely sure what I think about it. Girls had changed into their lingerie for one of the monologues. We were all supposed to wear whatever made us feel sexy and/or comfortable. (Like, one girl wore footie pajamas.) But lots of us were in teddies and such. Some girls left the dressing room and some guys came and started taking pictures of them without asking. I was truly pissed off when I’d heard about it, but some girls were less angry and militant than I was about it (aka saying we should threaten to or actually call campus police).
The thing is that Vagina Monologues is supposed to be a time and a place to wear lingerie (or footie pajamas) in order to have fun and reclaim your agency and sense of body. It’s supposed to be a safe way to do this without worrying and to make people confront women’s sexuality and desire head on. The guys who took the picture didn’t know what was happening or what it was for, but I just kept thinking that being photographed in these clothes without consent was very much what this show is not about. Mostly, it’s just hard to know what to do when I know that being sexual may be empowering for me, but can also be taken as a commodity by someone else.
I mean, it’s hardly the end of the world. Our director ended up scaring these guys off, and I wore a bright pink teddy in front of tons of people. And I did a monologue about pubic hair which I would have been scared to do a year ago.
I’m glad you decided to post about this after mentioning it in class today. It makes me think about how hard it is to get something exactly right– even events that are supposed to be empowering can sometimes be damaged by a thoughtless action. I’m glad you were able to shrug off the jerks taking pictures and enjoy the experience on your own terms. Maybe that’s what we should be striving for all the time.
PS: You totally rocked that pink teddy, and your monologue was awesome.
I don’t blame you for being pissed, i am pissed just thinking about it. I can’t believe people who have the audacity to be so disrespectful. Taking pictures without consent is not okay and not appropriate. It’s amazing how rude and disgusting people can be. It especially sucks because you all were creating this atmosphere of comfort and honesty among women and women’s bodies, and these boys almost took a part of that away. So power to you all for shaking it off, and still being fabulous!