The Good Body: Every Woman Has One, Says Eve Ensler 

Whether it’s packaged as what men aspire to have, or what women aspire to be, images of women’s sexuality are dominated by stick thin, surgically altered, airbrushed womanhood. Still, many women, self-proclaimed feminists like myself included, begrudgingly accept this picture as the industry standard of attractiveness and sex appeal. At the same time that the feminist in me rejects the idea that a woman needs a perfectly made-up face to be beautiful, the artist in me is attracted to the dramatic, beguiling look achieved with strategically placed eyeliner. For many women, this conflict results in an unhealthy love-hate relationship with our bodies. This internal dilemma is at the heart of feminist actor/playwright Eve Ensler’s latest play, The Good Body. It’s fine to want to look good, she says, but damnit, go ahead and eat some ice cream too. While The Good Body isn’t the enlightening or galvanizing theatrical experience The Vagina Monologues was, Eve Ensler still pulls off an entertaining, thoughtful performance to which many women can relate.

Ensler’s one-woman production, headed to Broadway in October, might as well be called The Body Monologues. Using the same live-documentary testimonial format from Vagina, Ensler presents a series of body-themed vignettes based on interviews she conducted with women across national and cultural boundaries. In between each tale, the artist chats with the audience about her attempts to “become good,” as her mother urged her to from childhood. After ninety-five minutes of sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing descriptions of what women will go through to attain The Good Body, the play concludes with Ensler eating a bowl of ice cream—a symbol of hedonism for calorie-conscious Western women and a symbol of rebellion for repressed Afghani women, for whom the cold treat is illegal. Ultimately, it is symbolic of food for all: nourishment, motherhood, and health.

With its sparse but stylized set, TGB takes a clever jab at the self-indulgent, voyeuristic fashion and entertainment industries. A tall, prominent white backdrop rolls down center stage with two director’s chairs and umbrella lights on stage right, resembling a photo studio. Several tiered rows of white chairs at stage left create the look of a small theater. Fast-paced video clips of runway models, glamorous billboards and still images of idealized female bodies throughout history pepper Ensler’s stories, set to a tune of high speed shutter clicks.

TGB portrays women from across the globe, from Afghanistan, India, Puerto Rico and various parts of the United States. Most of the women share an unhealthy obsession with attaining the perfect figure or body part (breasts, vagina, stomach or thighs) that was instilled in them through sexually abusive fathers, nitpicking mothers, Western media images of female beauty, or, perhaps most disconcertingly, their own innate feelings of inadequacy. Through gut wrenching stories about vagina-tightening surgery gone wrong, surgical breast removal (of healthy breasts), and witty characterizations of Botox bitches, Ensler forces her audience to ponder where these feelings come from.

What makes a woman stay complicit in her incest for twenty years? Why does another woman base her self-worth on the plastic surgery her husband encourages and provides? Each of Ensler’s stories probe the question, “What part of us refuses to say ‘no’ to our pain?”

Part of Ensler’s play is about her struggle to reconcile radical feminist views with anxiety over her “post-40s stomach.” Other parts examine general anxiety women have over their body image, which is perpetuated by both men and women. Her whole-body theme lacks the eye-opening, liberating punch of The Vagina Monologues, and her stories sometimes come across as either a workout whine or a simple bitch session about young, thin women. However, Ensler strikes an enjoyable balance between a serious look at the fears and desires of women that transcend national and cultural boundaries—as well as some literal navel-gazing.

* To find out when and where The Good Body is being performed near you, go to: Playbill

* Shirin Shoai is a graduate of Barnard College in New York City. Her writing has ranged in topic from music to media studies and has appeared in The New York Times and IndieRock Resource.