An extract from Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues

This is how I came to love my vagina. It’s embarrassing because it’s not politically correct. I mean I know it should have happened in a bath with salt grains from the Dead Sea, Enya playing, me loving my woman self. I know the story. Vaginas are beautiful. Our self-hatred is only the internalised repression and hatred of the patriarchal culture. It isn't real. Pussy’s Unite. I know all of it. Like if we’d grown up in a culture where we were taught fat thighs were beautiful, we’d all be pounding down milkshakes and donuts, lying on our backs spending our days thighs expanding.

But, we didn’t grow up in that culture. I hated my thighs and I hated my vagina even more. I thought it was incredibly ugly. I was one of those women who had looked at it and from that moment on I wished I hadn’t. It made me sick. I pitied anyone who had to go down there. In order to survive, I began to pretend there was something else between my legs. I imagined furniture – cosy futons with light cotton comforters, little velvet settees, leopard rugs, or pretty things – silk handkerchiefs, quilted potholders, or place settings. I got so accustomed to this that I lost all memory of having a vagina. Whenever a man was inside me, I pictured him inside a mink lined muffler, or a Chinese bowl.

Then I met Bob. Bob was the most ordinary man I ever met. He was thin and tall and nondescript and wore khaki tan clothes. Bob did not like spicy foods or listen to Prince. He had no interest in sexy lingerie.

In the summer he spent time in the shade. He did not share his inner feelings. He did not have any problems or issues and was not even an alcoholic. He wasn’t very funny or articulate or mysterious. He wasn’t mean or unavailable. He wasn’t self involved or charismatic. He didn’t drive fast. I didn’t particularly like Bob. I would have missed him altogether if he hadn’t picked up my change that I dropped on the deli floor. When he handed me back my quarters and pennies and his hand accidentally touched mine, something happened. I went to bed with him. That’s when the miracle occurred.

Turned out that Bob loved vaginas. He was a connoisseur. He loved the way they felt, the way they tasted, they way they smelled, but most importantly he loved the way they looked. He had to look at them. The first time we ever had sex, he told me he had to see me.

‘I’m right here,’ I said.

‘No, you,’ he said. ‘I have to see you.’

‘Turn on the light,’ I said.

Thinking he was a weirdo and freaking out in the dark. He turned on the light.

Then he said, ‘Ok, I’m ready, ready to see you.’

‘Right here,’ I waved, ‘I’m right here.’

Then he began to undress me.

‘What are you doing Bob?’ I said.

‘I need to see you,’ he replied.

‘No need,’ I said, ‘Just do it.’

‘I need to see what you look like,’ he said.

‘But you’ve seen a red leather couch before,’ I said.

Bob continued. He would not stop. I wanted to throw up and die.

‘This is awfully intimate,’ I said. ‘Can’t you just do it?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘It’s who you are. I need to look.’

I held my breath. He looked and looked. He gasped and smiled and stared and groaned. He got breathy and his face changed. He didn’t look ordinary anymore. He looked like a hungry beast.

‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said. ‘You’re elegant and deep and innocent and wild.’

‘You saw that there?’ I said.

It was like he read my palm.

‘I saw that,’ he said, ‘and more, much much more’.

He stayed looking for almost an hour as if he were studying a map, observing the moon, staring into my eyes, but it was my vagina. In the light I watched him looking at me and he was so genuinely excited, so peaceful and euphoric, I began to get wet and turned on. I began to see myself the way he saw me. I began to feel beautiful and delicious- like a great painting, or a waterfall. Bob wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t grossed out. I began to swell, began to feel proud. Began to love my vagina… and Bob, lost himself there and I was there with him, in my vagina, and we were gone.

Extracted from The Vagina Monologues