Clit Club

V-Day’s Charismatic Cuntism Rocks the Garden

A A A Comments By Sharon Lerner Tuesday, Feb 13 2001

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Still, using the body as organizing principle made for some uncomfortable juxtapositions. "Dry wad of fucking cotton!" Rosie Perez ranted against tampons in "My Angry Vagina," which awkwardly followed an African woman's statement that her clitoris was cut off. Then Calista Flockhart, reading "My Short Skirt," added, "My short skirt is mine!" to the fine legal arguments about sexy clothing her character has already delivered on Ally McBeal.

In the culmination of this starry strangeness, Oprah appeared on stage with a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. That country's Taliban regime has violently oppressed women, forcing them to shroud their faces with a heavy cloth burqaat risk of beating and even death. While Phoebe Snow howled wordlessly and audience members shrieked, "We love you, Oprah!" from the stands, the talk show host slowly lifted off the woman's veil.

photo: Christopher Smith

Fonda vaginas: Jane flashes the vulval V.

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It wasn't feminism exactly; it was something more theatrical and puzzling. V-Day seems to be a somehow transformative platform, where millennial women push on to whatever's next. It is the vehicle Jane Fonda chose for her return to the stage after swearing off Ted specifically and men in general. And of course, the Vagina Monologues was front and center in Rudy Giuliani's dissolving marriage, Donna Hanover's participation in the Off-Broadway version signaling the end as surely as the mayor's public strolls with his new "very good friend."

During the show at the Garden, Swoosie Kurtz played the role of a woman having a life-shaking first-ever orgasm in middle age. Participating in V-Day has offered a similar, if less dramatic, awakening for Kurtz. "I was a bit of a feminist before, a fair-weather feminist. Now," said the actress, pausing to grope for words, "I'm a vagina feminist."

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