Ensler - The Good Body

About the Author

Eve Ensler is an internationally acclaimed playwright whose previous works for the stage include Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, The Depot, Ladies, Lemonade, Necessary Targets, and The Vagina Monologues, for which she received an Obie Award. Ensler is the founder and artistic director of V-Day (www.vday.org), the global movement to end violence against women and girls that was inspired by The Vagina Monologues. In seven years V-Day has raised more than $25 million for grassroots groups around the world. Eve Ensler lives in New York City.

About the Book

We thought we knew what went on down there until Eve Ensler exploded our horizons with The Vagina Monologues. Now she is back, with an even more intimate journey into body and soul.

Why do we all loath some part of our body and desperately want to change it? Why are we so obsessed with losing weight? And why, Eve asks herself, cant she stop thinking about her evil stomach? Hilariously funny and deeply moving, The Good Body is Eves story of her quest to purge herself of this all-consuming obsession, and of the wild and wonderful women she met along the way. We follow her through the serial seductions of low carb diets, ab rollers and sadistic trainers to the wise words of a woman who taught her how to love her body, and see that it was good.

Special Acknowledgments

I would like to particularly thank Peter Askin, Ileene Smith, Gary Sunshine, and Priya Parmar for their invaluable help with the words.

I would like to thank Harriet Leve, Matthew Rego, Michael Rego, Hank Unger, Allison Prouty, Kelly Gonda, Joy de Menil, Nancy Rose, George Lane, and Charlotte Sheedy for moving this play into the world.

The following have supported my show, my heart , my body, and my being: ACT, Kevin Adams, Paula Allen, Caitlin Bell, Nicoletta Billi, Cathie Bishop, Rada Boric, Clint Boyd, Robert Brill, Helen Gurley Brown, Oliver Campbell-Calder, Myung Hee Cho, Harriet Clark, Diana de Vegh, Bob Fennell, Jerri Lynn Fields, Eileen Fisher, Jane Fonda, Elisa Guthertz, Wendall Harrington, Deborah Hecht, Susan Hilferty, Mellody Hobson, Heather Kitchen, Lisa Leguillou, Elizabeth Lesser, Cecile Lipworth, Colin Lively, Vernon McIntosh, Pat Mitchell, Tony Montenieri, Emma Myles, Sheila Nevins and HBO, Shael Norris, Hibaaq Osman, Sharon Ott, Pratibha Parmar, Carey Perloff, Richard Peterson, Johanna Pfaelzer, Arabella Powell, Carol Fox Presscott, Sil Reynolds, Kim Rosen, Isabella Rossellini, the Seattle Repertory Theatre, Rade Serbedzija, Barry Silver, David Stone, Susan Swan, Lenka Udovicki, Ulysses Theatre Company, David Van Tieghem, Laura Wagner, Katherine Wessling, Marion Woodman.

I would like to thank the women whose bodies I love and whose stories I hold, from Greece, Turkey, Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Bosnia, Croatia , Macedonia, Bulgaria, Guatemala, Mexico, the United States, Brazil, Kenya, the Bahamas, South Africa, Kosovo, Puerto Rico, India, Pakistan, Russia, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Israel, Australia, Canada, the Philippines, Iran, Korea, and particularly Iraq and Afghanistan.

I would like to thank the women from RAWA for taking me to get ice cream in Jalalabad.

I would like to thank my beloved family: Dylan and Shiva and Coco McDermott; Chris, my mother; Laura, my sister; and my brother, Curtis.

And my partner, Ariel Orr Jordan, whose faith and love sustain and inspire me daily.

Also by Eve Ensler

The Vagina Monologues

Necessary Targets: A Story of Women and War

Helen Gurley Brown

AUTHOR AND PIONEERING EDITOR OF COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE

EVE DEAR, COME in, pussycat Do you like her? (Referring to slides) Shes the December cover were going rounder for the Christmas season. Were desperate for the feeling of holiday fullness and cheer. Dont mind me, Im multitasking. I do a hundred sit ups for every shot. Nine, ten, one hundred

Eighty years old, one hundred sit-ups twice a day, I m down to ninety pounds. Another ten years, Ill be down to nothing. But even then I wont feel beautiful. I accept this terrible condition. Its driven me to be disciplined and successful.

Through Cosmo Ive been able to help women everywhere. Well, almost everywhere.

Through Cosmo, Ive been able to help everyone but me. Ironic. Come closer, Eve; I dont bite. Lets have a treat!

(Opening Edamame) Edamame, my new favourite treat. Its food that isnt food. Energy. Thats the closest I ever come to cooking. I never did get the nurture gene.

My mother never saw me. She saw acne. She took me to the doctor twice a week for five years. He opened, postuled, and squeezed my face. He left it battered. He would keep an X-ray machine on my face, five minutes at a time. This was long before we knew about X rays. He burned the bottom layer off my face. After the appointments we would drive around, my mother and I. She would cry, I would cry. How can I be a happy person, Helen? she would say . Your sister is in a wheelchair with polio. Your father is dead. And you, Helen, you have acne. When I was ten, my friend Elizabeth was swinging from the tree. She fell and everyone came and made a huge fuss over her. I told this to my mother and she said, Of course: Elizabeths pretty. People make a fuss over girls who are pretty. Thats why you, you will need brains.

(Doing sit-ups again) Dont get things fixed, Eve. Dont do it. (Stops sit-ups) If you do, another thing always breaks down. I had my eyes done when I was forty. I thought that would do. But no. Tried it again when I was fifty-six. First full face-lift at sixty-three. Second at sixty-seven. Third at seventy-three. Im desperate for another, but theres no skin left on my face. Yesterday they took some fat out of my backside and they shot it into my cheeks. I think even you would approve, Eve. I am recycling. My shrink thinks Im still doing this for my mother, Cleos gone almost twenty years. Can you imagine, Im still doing this for her? I never had a daughter. But if I did, I would tell her she was beautiful and lovely every minute . If she asked, Helenoh God, she wouldnt say Helen, shes not my executive assistant. If she said, Mother, am I as pretty as Brooke Shields? Id have to do a little hedging. Youre not classic, Id say. But youre beautiful in your way, dear. Eve, I would really have to practice this. One thing I never had to practice was sex. I took to it like a duck to water. Its been a good week. My husband and I had sex two days in a row. Not bad for eighty. My husband, hes feisty, always has been. The crazy thing is hes always thought I was beautiful, but of course that doesnt count, I mean, he loves me.

Thanks for sharing. Im so depressed. I think Helen is too, though she doesnt seem to know it. Is that what Im going for? I eat another Starbucks Maple Walnut Scone. I run into a friend on the street. Shes strangely enthusiastic, pointing at my stomach.

Eve, congratulations!

Eve on treadmill

I go straight to the gym.

I do not pass Starbucks, I do not pass Hagen-Dazs.

I strap myself to the treadmill.

Four hours, six hours. People are pissed off. I dont care.

I am working on an abortion.

A girls got a right to choose.

I have rubber burns on my sneakers

I smell like a traffic accident

Big surprise: Vernon says, Great! Keep going.

Eve doing sit-ups

A hundred and twenty sit-ups twice a day.