The twenty-three female cast members of The Vagina Monologues who filed onto the stage of the Shapiro Campus Center Theater Sunday night did so as one, clad in elegant outfits that accentuated their differences even as the identical shades of black and gold lent them an air of solidarity. So began the Vagina Club's annual production of Eve Ensler's controversial play, a collection of genital-themed interviews with women representing a multitude of ages, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities and backgrounds, read off of cue cards to further emphasize the reality of the stories.This marks the fifth year The Vagina Monologues has been performed at Brandeis, always in honor of V-Day, Ensler's reinvention of Valentine's Day as a global movement to stop violence against women. In honor of the event, the Vagina Club has vowed to donate all proceeds from the play to both the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC) and organizations supporting this year's V-Day cause: assisting the surviving "comfort women" who were forced to serve as sexual slaves to Japanese soldiers during the Asia/Pacific Wars between 1932 and 1945.

Each piece contributes to the general purpose of attempting to remove the "darkness and secrecy" surrounding the vagina, which is viewed as a taboo, almost dirty subject for discussion by nearly every society; however, the monologues are as varied as the women themselves. They can be poignant, as was "The Flood," the tale of one old woman (read with a perfect quivering scold by Sarah Krevsky '08) who rejected what her vagina had to offer decades ago; funny, as was the artsy and breathy "The Vagina Workshop" (performed by Gillian Richter '09); defiantly vulgar (unfortunately, we can't print the vaginal synonym which Aileen Gleizer '08 encouraged the audience to yell at full volume in the monologue of the same name); and beyond.

At its most effective, though, The Vagina Monologues acts as nothing short of a rallying cry to action. In "Say It," Amanda DiSanto '09, Ma'ayan Friedman '09, Erika Geller '09, Hilary Spear '08 and Xela Stitz '06 made the theme of V-Day 2006 come utterly alive, taking on the roles of several comfort women as they pleaded, demanded and even screamed for justice. Nor could many members of the audience remain unmoved during Sanhita Choudhury's '07 and Barri Yanowitz's '06 electrifying rendition of "My Vagina Was My Village," the harrowing account of a Bosnian woman who was savagely raped by a band of soldiers. As Choudhury spoke of the idyllic imagery with which the woman once viewed her vagina, Yanowitz responded with a graphic description of the bloody aftermath, powerfully imposing a realization of the physical agony of the act.

Independent of the wonderful performance itself, however, there is something about The Vagina Monologues itself that I find a little... well, disquieting. As a woman, I recognize the play's intention to serve as a healing balm for millennia of violence and repression, but as a critic, I question any play that defies, by its very nature, any negative comments about its style or content. Since the play's theme is one of empowerment to say the forbidden, let those involved allow, rather than reflexively attack, the inquiring spirit with which this proud feminist offers the following thoughts:

The women's rights movement is one that seeks to lift up an entire gender, so that women may be defined not only by their physical form and traditional place in society, but by what they can do and what they can be. This concept is indeed explored within The Vagina Monologues, but it is always, unrelentingly, seen through a sexualized lens. I find it hard to see the pivotal importance, for example, of discussing whether an anthropomorphic vagina would be more likely to wear a leopard hat or sweatpants, as Lindsay Donohue '07, Samantha Hermann '07 and Miriam Sievers '06 pondered in "The 'Wear' and 'Say' List." On the contrary, it seems to point back to the same phenomenon about which the recently passed Betty Friedan warned in her vital book The Feminine Mystique: that modern women, long defined as purely sexual beings, are in danger of focusing obsessively on their sexual liberation, without giving a fair share to other areas (professional, cultural, educational) of equal or greater importance.

It is excellent that women have such a wonderful outlet as The Vagina Monologues to express their sexual wants, thoughts, needs and fears in a public forum, but especially on this day, V-Day, women must take care not to let the vagina symbolize the entire woman-body, mind, soul and heart. Vagina-gazing should not, and must not, become the new navel-gazing.

Editor's note: Samantha Hermann '07 is a staff writer for the Justice.