•14tiut

Eve Ensler:
"I couldn't understand
how I, a radical activist,

could spend this much
time thinking about my

stomach."

Difficult Childhood
Ensler traces her fixation
on disenfranchised
women (and her stomach)
to her abuse-ridden child-
hood in ScarSdale, N.Y.
She says her late Jewish
father raped her from the
ages of 5 to 10; thereafter,
he beat her and tormented her with
food.
"He considered showing hunger to
be gauche, revealing your lack of
class and manners:' Ensler retalls.
"Ile said, 'Only pigs eat bread. Our
dining room table was all about not
eating too much, sitting up straight,
which utensils you were sup.posed to
use.
"I spent years liberating myself
from the terror of that table. In fact,
I didn't have a dining room table
until this year, because it was the set
piece-for so much anxiety."
Young Eve found respite in a "nur-
turing, big-busted, luscious Jewish •
aunt" who stuffed her with brisket,
taught her to love food and "to asso-
ciate all things emotional and real
with being Jewish."
Meanwhile, Eve's own blond, non-
Jewish mother seemed dismayed by
her theatricality and her resem-
blance to Anne Frank, Ensler says in
The Good Body. Eve was hardly the
paradigm of the "good" (i.e., blond
and perky) 1950s girl.
Enemas, perms and dancing les-
sons were prescribed to "clean me
up, shut me up, make me good:' she
says.
By the time Ensler was in high
school, she was drinking heavily to
numb her childhood pain. After col-
lege, she wandered the country in an
alcohol-induced haze, living.naked
in communes, subsisting for months
on booze and marinated mush-
rooms.
Playwriting and activism provided
a crucial part of her recovery in her
20s and 30s.
By 1996, Ensler had interviewed
hundreds of subjects to write The
Vagina Monologues, which celebrates
female sexuality, decries domestic
violence and the shame women
associate with their most private of

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Eve Ensler's The Good

Body will be performed at
Music Hall Center for the
Performing Arts, 350
Madison, in Detroit. Show
times are 8 p.m.
Wednesday, Feb.15; 8 p.m.
Friday, Feb. 17; 8 p.m.
Saturday, Feb.18; and 2
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tickets on opening night
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For information, visit
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parts. After performing the show for
years, she says, she "finally felt com-
fortable with my vagina after talking
about it so much."

Self-Acceptance
When her shame moved up to her
stomach, Ensler again grabbed her
notebook and consulted women
around the world. She met Asians
who poisoned themselves with skin-
lightening creams, mothers who
removed their daughters' ribs so
they would not have to worry about
dieting and Texas matrons who had
their feet surgically narrowed to fit
into Manolo Blahniks.
She also met Indian and African
women who celebrated their round-
ness and helped Ensler to embrace
her body.
So after performing The Good
Body for.more than a year, is the
artist finally over her stomach? She
says she is — mostly. She no longer
meticulously diets and exercises, -
although she does feel the occasional
twinge when she sees waifs with flat,
pierced bellies. But she appreciates
how generous her body is.
"It performs eight shows a week
for me. It travels the world. It doesn't
often get sick:' she says.
Ensler was pleased when several
older Jewish viewers in Miami "got"
her message after viewing her show
recently.
"They said they were donating the
money they had saved for plastic
surgery to charity:' she says.
"My prayer for all women is that
they stop seeking to look good and
to be 'good' but to do good." ❑

*

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Open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
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ITN

February 9 • 2005

43

