Friday, February 05, 2010

in a lopsided world...

If The Vagina Monologues encourages women to connect to and celebrate their sexuality, desire and physicality then Eve Ensler has shifted her focus with her latest work, I am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, to exploring the emotional self and being called into one's power and pleasure through the voices of teenage girls she has met. I'm looking forward to getting my mitts on the full text.

Joel was recommended this week's NPR On Point with Tom Ashbrook interview with Eve and promptly brought it to my attention. It's a great piece of radio and unsurprisingly caused a lot of listener reaction. You can hear the interview here and the 2 featured monologues she performed for the show are posted as separate audio files here.

Yesterday I encountered the work of NZ feminist author and women's human rights activist Marilyn Waring in the Canadian film, Who's Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics. you can watch it here. There are several points of connection between her thesis and Ensler's.
There is a edited-for-radio audio-only version of this 1995 documentary here. i recommend the full-length film version if you can make the time. Still shockingly pertinent 15 years on. She has a commitment to only using comprehensible language when exploring economics and exposes the problem of work that is considered "women's work" is also considered unimportant and unproductive to a economy. She explores the value in measuring 'time use' and the environmental impact of global economic principles based purely on 'growth'. 

Deeply grateful for both these women.

LB

No comments:

Post a Comment