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Self-Loathing
In the funny and brash play, Ensler
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She adopts the role of 11 other
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Far To Go .
certainly practices what
she preaches. She has parlayed bene-
fit performances of Monologues into
a worldwide V-Day movement that
has raised millions to end violence
against women.
Critics mostly honor her inten-
tions and her status as a feminist
icon, and a. number have lauded The
Good Body. But some considered its
theme old news when the play.
debuted on Broadway in October
2004.
Ensler, 52,
• ‘74te 2)c-pt4t9 • ecotideatepteemet Pevtzept,
• 4we
tuchas.
Then there's legendary Cosmo edi-
tor Helen Gurley Brown — purveyor
of the thin-is-sexy-ideal — whose
own mother said she was plain.
"I'm down to 90 pounds," the 80-
year-old character says in the play,
while completing 100 sit-ups. .
"Another 10 years, I'll be down to
nothing. But even then, I won't feel
beautiful. I accept this terrible con-
dition."
Brown's self-loathing was typical
of the myriad women Ensler met
while researching the play on her
Monologues tour.
"It's given that a woman will
despise at least part of her body, and
increasingly deemed advisable for
her to go to any lengths to correct
it," she says.
Ensler blames the negative condi-
tioning on continuing pressure from
popular culture in patriarchal soci-
eties.
"What a great way to keep women
out of power," she adds, sounding
cheeky and earthy during a phone
interview sandwiched between
Miami performances. "As long as we
keep focusing on fixing ourselves, we
aren't going to rise up and fix the
world, are we? We spend an unprece-
dented $40 billion a year on beauty
products. But what if we used that
time and money to improve life on
this planet?"
"Self-help
books and cul-
tural mani-
festos have
been decrying
the country's
emphasis oil
irrationally
idealized body
image and its
pernicious
influence on
feminine self-
esteem for
decades," the
New York Times
said.
Indeed, Susan Orbach published
Fat Is a Feminist Issue in 1978, and
Naomi Wolf wrote The Beauty Myth
in 1991.
"The show often serves as therapy
rather than crusading ideology," the
Philadelphia Inquirer said.
Ensler scoffs at the suggestion that
The Good Body is lightweight or
irrelevant.
"We've been talking about issues
such as body image and domestic
violence for as long as we can
remember, and it's not like we get
done," she says, annoyed. "And in an
era when we have more anorexic
girls than ever, and when extreme-
makeover shows proliferate on TV,
we clearly have far to go?'
Carole Black, aV-Day activist and
•former CEO of Lifetime
Entertainment, agrees. "I have so
many friends who are heads of net-
works who always worry about
something, [such as] flabby arms or
thighs," she says. "It's amazing that
we still agonize about this, because
the men I know don't care!'
Perhaps Ensler's approach works
because it is more visceral than aca-
demic.
"The power of Eve's words turns
something very personal into some-
thing very universal;' said Pat
Mitchell, V-Day Council chair and
the president and CEO of PBS.
After listening to Ensler, even an
initially skeptical Guardian reporter
came around. "I felt something hap-
pen inside — intellectual anger
about beauty tyranny changed into
physical rejection of it, a less sophis-
ticated but more formidable force!'
she wrote. "[Ensler's] plays are
transforming armchair post-femi-
nists into activists, and radicalizing
women more effectively than a •
whole generation of feminist theory!'