Beyond Vagina-dome

April 17, 2008 | "Jane is preaching!" shouted an African-American woman in front of me, as Jane Fonda held forth on a stage on the floor of the Louisiana Superdome about how "the opposite of patriarchy is democracy." Above Fonda's head sparkled a gigantic fuchsia logo designed to look like lady parts; before her, a crazy assemblage of women of every color, size, age and sexual orientation whooped at her "sermon" on the intersection of art and activism. The audience was sitting in the middle of an even odder intersection: a football stadium that, less than three years ago, was the site of fear and violence, and was now decked out to resemble a very large cooter.

Fonda was delivering remarks to close out the "Superlove" portion of "V to the Tenth," Ensler's two-day birthday party for her vagina-loving organization, V-Day, and for the play that started it all, "The Vagina Monologues." Fonda -- who had drummed up publicity for this event back in February by uttering the word "cunt" on morning television -- began her speech with some copious crying. "I am so proud to be a woman!" she'd said, sniffing mightily as she took the stage. It ended with some Eckhart Tolle-influenced wavy-gravy about how we're all fields of energy. "This is not just new-age hogwash," she said, "It is actually how reality works." (Um, no, not really. But she's Jane Fonda, so that's OK!)

In between, Fonda had given a kick-ass homily about art and activism in movies like "9 to 5," "Coming Home" and "The China Syndrome"; about how Katrina was "not a natural disaster, it was a man-made disaster"; and about how women should help men cultivate a "feminist masculinity." Fonda said of the two-day roster of speakers and performers who had preceded her on the labial stage -- including Suze Orman and Naomi Klein -- "I have been rocked to my core. And I am so grateful to Eve Ensler and V-Day ... who made it possible for us to hear the women of New Orleans."

Eve Ensler is a troubling figure in the feminist universe, a woman whose famous piece of theater has indeed changed the way many of us talk. It is now, somewhat miraculously, OK to say "vagina." To many women raised to feel shame or confusion about their bodies and their sexuality, Ensler has handed over a vocabulary of good humor, honesty and self-confidence.

But she's taken that gift and built on it in ways that have not been nearly as useful for anything except raising her own profile, and in many cases have been discomfiting. In Ensler's megalomaniacal V-universe, everything from voter registration to the Iraq war is seen through the speculum, er, spectrum, of the vagina, and moist metaphor and love for Eve (and beav) rule the day. It often seems, in fact, that Ensler has taken her laudable grass-roots success and turned it into a celebrity-centric, glitzy franchise -- one that has, in its unrelenting and patronizing focus on women-as-cootches, often felt as reductive and objectifying as the language Ensler originally set out to fight.

I wrote a piece in which I leveled these criticisms at Ensler four years ago, and as a result was denied press credentials to the V to the Tenth weekend -- an odd decision from an organization that relies on the press to fluff its reputation, and one that confirmed my suspicion that, while Ensler claims to love all vaginas, only the ones that worship at her personal altar are truly welcome in her world. V-Day organizers were not wrong that I had been suspicious of their New Orleans event. V-Day's Web site promised a starry performance of the monologues (tickets ranging from $25 to $5,000!) with Oprah Winfrey at the helm, as well as yoga lounges, makeovers, healing circles, storytelling tents and altars in honor of Katrina victims. Advance press for the event had included slightly vomitous comparisons between New Orleans -- one of America's truly great cities, left to drown two and a half years ago -- and a vagina. In short, I feared that the event might represent the wacky worst of what Ensler's project has to offer: the mining of serious tragedy for a nonsensical vulvic celebration that serves only to portray women as victims and Ensler and her brand as their healers.

I was quite wrong. At moments -- especially the moments that did not involve Ensler -- V to the Tenth embodied the very best of the V-Day mission. It's true that there was more "ecstatic dance" and misty-eyed metaphor about drowning in rivers of pain than was really necessary. But there were also women -- thousands of women! -- who showed up. This celebration was a lot less high-wattage than expected, or than Ensler may have wanted. But perhaps in its slapdash, unrehearsed feel, and its welcoming of local women who had barely heard of V-Day before, it found its salvation.

Take the bra ball. It was a large ball. Of bras. It was part of an art exhibit that greeted visitors when they walked onto the floor of the Superdome. On Friday morning, soon after the Superlove kickoff, 76-year-old Marie Varnado and her friend Joyce Murray, 75, were poking at the rolled-up support garments gingerly, choking on their own laughter.

"What is this? We are inquisitive!" Varnado asked a male security guard, who raised his eyebrows warily and shrugged. Varnado and Murray were both born and raised in New Orleans, and until Katrina they had lived at St. John Berchman's Manor for older adults. Varnado fled with her family to Houston, then Baton Rouge, and now Atlanta. Murray, who also relocated to Atlanta, told me of her escape in a Times-Picayune paper delivery truck.

The women had returned home for the weekend, part of a group that had been bused in to take advantages of the services -- massage, medical testing, beauty treatments, yoga, theater and therapy -- being offered free to all women from the Gulf South. In the first hour, Varnado had already bumped into people she knew and had not seen since the storm. Murray said, "The saddest part about the storm is missing the people. In New Orleans, the families are real close-knit. Now it's all scattered."

"That's the thing about New Orleans," Varnado added. "It's not like anyplace else." Both women want to come home for good. But for now, a weekend beyond Vagina-dome was the best they could do. And while neither of them had ever heard of Ensler or V-Day before, they were pretty amused by the whole thing.

"It's something new at my age!" said Murray. "In our time, we never said that word. When I was a girl, you'd have to be more hush-hush! You'd come in a room and your parents would start speaking Creole." Varnado grabbed her arm. "That's right! But lord, this is too funny. There was a man who came in here, and a lady said to him, 'I think you're in the wrong place. This is a vagina, not a penis!'" She doubled over with laughter.

Next page: Ensler took the stage. "Are there any vaginas in the house?"