This book is such a feel-good, lift your spirits type of book. Yes, there are some sad monologues but in a way it makes me feel more united with all girls around the world. I can put myself in their shoes. I think that was the purpose of Ensler writing this book. To make women aware of kind of travesties women endure. This book is to make us aware of who we really are and to embrace it and flaunt our beautiful complex souls. YES we are/can be emotional creatures, but we shouldn't let society make us believe that its a bad thing!
I'd like to leave with you some excerpts from the book. It was hard to choose because in all seriousness, every section I adored. They're pretty long, but I really feel that you will feel much better after reading them.
"Dear Emotional Creature,
You know who you are. I wrote this book because I believe in you. I believe in your authenticity, your uniqueness, your intensity, your wildness. I love the way you dye your hair purple, or hike up your short skirt, or blare your music while you lip-sync every single memorized lyric. I love your restlessness and your hunger. You are one of our greatest natural resources, you Possess a necessary agency and energy that if unleashed could transform, inspire, and heal the world.
I know we make you feel stupid, as if being a teenager meant you were temporarily deranged. We have become accustomed to muting you, judging you, discounting you, asking you --- sometimes even forcing you --- to betray what you see and know and feel.
You scare us. You remind us of what we have forced to shut down or abandon in ourselves in order to fit in. You ask us by your being to question, to wake up, to reperceive. Sometimes I think we tell you we are protecting you when really we are protecting ourselves from our own feelings of self-betrayal and loss."
"This book is to call to question rather than to please. To provoke, to challenge, to dare, to satisfy your own imagination and appetite. To know yourself truly. To take responsibility for who you are, to engage. This book is a call to listen to the voice inside you that might want something different, that hears, that knows, the way only you can hear and know. It's a call to your original girl self, to you emotional creature self, to move at your speed, to walk with your step, to wear your color. It is an invitation to heed your instinct to resist war, or draw snakes, or to speak to the stars"
My short skirt
is not an invitation
a provocation
an indication
that I want it
or give it
or that I hook.
My short skirt
is not begging for it
it does not want you
to rip it off me
or pull it up or down.
My short skirt
is not a legal reason
for raping me
although it has been before
it will not hold up
in the new court
My short skirt, believe ir or not,
has nothing to do with you
My short skirt
is about discovering
the power of my calvs
about cool autumn air traveling
up my inner thighs
about allowing everything I see
or pass or feel to live inside.
My short skirt is not proof
that i am stupid
or undecided
or a malleable little girl.
My short skirt is my defiance.
I will not let you make me afraid.
My short skirt is not showing off,
this is who I am
before you made me cover it
or tone it down.
Get used to it.
My short skirt is happiness.
I can feel myself on the ground
I am here. I am hot.
My short skirt is a liberation
flag in the women's army.
I declare these streets, any streets,
my vagina's country.
My short skirt
is turquoise water with swimming colored fish
a summer festival in the starry dark
a bird calling
a train arriving in a foreign town.
My short skirt is a wild spin
a full breath
a tango dip.
My short skirt is
initiation, appreciation, excitation.
But mainly my short skirt
and everything under it
is mine, mine, mine
PLEASE PICK UP EVE ENSLER'S BOOK. I ASSURE YOU THIS WILL NOT BE MONEY GONE TO WASTE.
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