The Vagina Monologues kicked off tonight at Coffman, with an all-student cast and a student director. It was AWESOME. There were 2 new monologues and they also did one in spanish, which was cool.

The newest monologue, one of them, was about these three women whose faces were desecrated. One by a bomb in Baghdad; her face melted off because of American bombings and her father was embarassed of her, not concerned, but ashamed that now he couldn't marry her off and she was worthless to him. Another about a woman in mexico, one of several hundred, who disappeared and was raped and maimed and her body found in a ditch in pieces of bone. The third, this one the worst and the one that made me cry, was a woman in Pakistan whose husband was annoyed by her "needy face" and so he hit her. First with a frying pan, then a whip, then his fists, and finally he got so annoyed that he threw acid on her face. It melted off.

Apparently there were 70 some cases of acid-throwing, men at their wives, in Pakistan in the last year. Somehow the government has managed to loophole convicting them and so women, faceless, continue to suffer in hospitals and public shelters, some even neglected at home with their husbands, simply because they have no place else to go.

i was crying uncontrollably tonight on the phone with joel. there are women around the world, even in our own country, that will never, never have any semblance of a loving and respectful and supportive relationship and i have never been so aware of that, nor of how fortunate i really am. it makes me want to be active in helping, somehow. any way that i can. i was thinking of checking out (in my spare time...) local shelters for battered women and children, like my dad used to work at in kenosha.

once again, the VMons never cease to amaze and inspire me.