The Vagina Monologues

I drew this right after I came back from my Europe trip last year, when I was seeking to start drawing my own stuff and didn’t know what to. It’s a copy of The Vagina Monologues I bought in London the day after I saw Prima Facie.

I remember how fascinated and shaken up I felt the first time I read, and then, saw The Vagina Monologues as a college student. It challenged everything I had learned about being a woman, growing up in a very Asian culture. I was rattled and mesmerized by the voices of the women in the play. The power of their words.

I loved it. I read those words over and over, wanting them to challenge me harder, to open me up.

And now, the story of Tessa Ensler made me feel the same way—her voice lingering inside me, pushing hard to open me up again. More. It made me want to soak back into the words of her namesake, Eve Ensler (though I should note that now she goes by V, having let go of her former husband’s surname).

Buying this new copy itself was an experience for me, which subtly yet significantly made me feel the change happening in me and—simply left me giddy after.

Here’s a comic about that:

I know it looks like I just had a perfectly normal small talk with a shop clerk, but I was flirting! Because I felt I was. Because there was this giddiness in me as I was having this perfectly normal small talk interaction with this cute person, who most likely didn’t feel like they were being flirted with. It’s not my fault that I’m a bad flirt. It’s like dancing. Even if it doesn’t look like it, if I say I’m dancing, I am.

Anyway, the point here is that I felt free to flirt with this person I found cute without thinking about their gender or mine, that the possibility was there, which, I realized after the interaction, I had somehow stopped allowing myself in the past several years where I had been living in Asia, often close to my family in my home culture. After years, I felt free from my cultural conditioning I was pushing myself back into. I felt free to be queer.

And that felt great.

The book kept me company for the rest of my travels in Europe, sometimes inciting wonderful conversations with friends about gender and sexuality, about being a woman. Even after I returned to my home in Asia, I look at these vivid colors on the cover and remember who I want to be, wherever I am. It’s a perfect reminder to keep the momentum going from the trip, from watching the play, and to never stop opening up.