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V-Day Focuses on Ending Violence vs. Women

The Carolina V-Day Initiative brings V-Day, promoting women's issues during Valentine's Day, to UNC.

It's also about vaginas.

It's official. It's OK to say ... vagina.

So proclaims the forces behind the UNC V-Week, which is much more than that notable part of the female anatomy.

The first official V-Day was held on Valentine's Day in 1998 in New York, but the movement has since spread to college campuses and nations across the globe.

So why the correspondence with the holiday?

"It's about love," said Kim Benton, founder of the Carolina V-Day Initiative.

"A day that is already devoted to love should be refocused to reclaim women's issues. Most abusive relationships are loving relationships."

The purpose of V-Week, which lasts from Feb. 11 to Feb. 16, is to raise awareness of violence against women through campuswide programs and a production of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues."

The Carolina V-Day Initiative will produce two performance of "The Vagina Monologues" at 8 p.m. Feb. 15 and 16 to bring attention to V-Week.

Spurred by conversations between women about their vaginas and their relationships to them, playwright Eve Ensler set out to dissolve the mystique that surrounds the word. Ensler interviewed more than 200 women about their bodies, which resulted in "The Vagina Monologues."

"The monologues are based on interviews the playwright conducted with a diverse group of women. Therefore, each one is honest and real and based on actual stories," said Jean Kerley, executive producer of UNC's production.

This honest take on womanhood brought the play great acclaim when it was performed off Broadway in 1996 and attracted stars like Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Glenn Close and Kate Winslet to perform in the play.

But Ensler still had a message to convey. Not satisfied with penning a critical hit and demolishing cultural norms, Ensler drew upon her conversations with abused women to envision a day that would bring awareness to violence against women and other women's issues worldwide.

That day became V-Day, which is described on its official Web site as "a global movement to stop violence against women and girls." UNC's involvement in the V-Day Initiative began last year when Benton formed the Carolina V-Day Initiative and staged three shows of "The Vagina Monologues."

"The response was absolutely amazing last year," Benton said.

Held in the small space of the Old PlayMaker's Theater, box office tickets sold out in four minutes, and lines formed at 3 p.m. for each nightly show.

This year, to accommodate more audiences, two performances of "The Vagina Monologues" will be held in the larger Memorial Hall. All ticket proceeds, which amounted to $4,500 last year, will go to benefit the Orange County Rape Crisis Center.

"The play teaches its audience to wake up and smell the liberation," said senior Julie George, who portrays The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy in the show. "The play empowers every woman who sees it to take pride in her vagina and to break away from the sexual oppression we live in today."

In addition to staging "The Vagina Monologues," this year's V-Week will feature a benefit concert and programs entitled "The Intersection of Sexual Violence and the Reproductive Choice" and "Help for You, Helping Others."

Benton said the importance in the V-Day cause is dealing with conversational taboos, from vaginas to rape.

"It's really about empowering women to be proud of their bodies and to realize that things in the world are not OK," she said.

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