Bluetracks: Not an unforgiving girl
“She’s not an unforgiving girl / it’s just an unforgiving world.” This Car Seat Headrest lyric from the track “Unforgiving Girl (She’s Not An)” pithily comments on a woman’s constant fight to be palpable and present in trying environments that may attempt to discredit her.
This lyric lingers as we’re fresh off International Women’s Day and a weekend of performances of “The Vagina Monologues” on campus. These demonstrations of solidarity in conversation and art emphasized the joys of femininity as well as the complications in living it on a daily basis across the globe. Moreover, they’ve raised crucial questions about who is afforded the chance to express her feminine perspective and why, especially in discussions fostered in academic spaces. To even begin to collectively engineer answers, women must first build each other up and in the same stroke, must refuse to apologize to the unforgiving world for moving forward with heart, fight and moxie.
In case you’re unfamiliar with “The Vagina Monologues,” it’s a Tony Award-winning episodic drama written in 1996 by Eve Ensler. Ensler conducted interviews with hundreds of women and then compressed them into dramatic sketches, which have been performed in theatre spaces and on college campuses for the past two decades. The monologue readings work with a decent topical spectrum of femininity, ranging from sexual expression, to queer identities, to the sexual assault and exploitation of women to mobilizing communities for change. In each production, the cast of women attempts to exercise voice, explore perspective and perform shades of feminine experience without being didactic.
Now, this year our university’s cast of 34 women was apparently the most diverse in recent memory, offering more shades of the feminine experience than ever: two black women, two Indian women, two Asian women and one trans woman. Out of 34. And we call that diversity.
Without being tied to a specific monologue, I felt that in my role as the narrator, I could observe and assess the performance a bit more holistically and objectively. I’ll echo the main idea of the op-ed put forth by the executive board that coordinated the performances: “The Vagina Monologues” are so white. What follows is the question: What does this mean?
One of my tasks as narrator was to collect songs from each cast member to create something called the “Vagina Home Song” playlist that provided the music before the shows and at intermission. A “vagina home song” is a concept that stems from the crushing monologue about rape during the Yugoslav wars, titled, “My Vagina was My Village.” These songs robustly capture personal ideas of womanhood and power in feminine energy. Generally anthemic in nature, the songs are selected to reflect identity. I don’t know why I was startled by patterns in the playlist. I guess I failed to anticipate the correlation between a predominantly white cast and “white music.”
I failed to anticipate Stevie Nicks.
When asked who runs the world, we can say that girls do without hesitation. Beyoncé is the closest we can get to a universal icon for female empowerment and thus, she almost reigned supreme over the playlist. When asked who invented punk, we can argue between England and Patti Smith. Punk legacies laced the playlist by way of X-ray Spex, Against Me! and Sleater-Kinney. When asked about the geography of comfort and belonging, we might whisper something about folk music. The home songs did not shy away from Joni Mitchell and First Aid Kid or even male bands like Fleet Foxes.
But when asked about the musical anchor of white feminism, I had to consult the playlist for the answer. Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac came up as the undeniable winner. “Rhiannon,” “Silver Springs” or “Edge of Seventeen” seemed to pop up in every other submission. As pleased as I was as someone who is named after a Fleetwood Mac song and who owns “Rumours” vinyl, I had to wonder if there was an insidious element to this trend.
The monopolization of the “Vagina Monologues” by white feminists would be inherently negative. This would come in the form of an all-white cast attempting to adopt the stories and personas of minorities featured in the drama, effectively narrowing the scope of authentic femininity and excluding those who are least heard. So if the executive board recognizes and actively avoids this threat to disadvantaged women, why is the cast still so white?
Put simply, the cast reflects the composition of our university’s campus, which is predominantly white. But then the question remains that if the performers, pulled honestly from the university ranks, cannot identify with the experiences of characters like the trans woman or the migrant field laborer or sex worker, is it right for them to perform such stories? If the performers operate as conduits and not sources, is it permissible? Wouldn’t it be worse to not hear those stories at all? What is the line between appreciating and trying to understand stories versus co-opting and appropriating them? This ethically haziness extends far beyond the monologues.
With all this in mind, we circle back to Stevie. If undergraduate white girls were consciously edging out women of color, members of the LGBTQ community, Latinas, immigrants and women below the poverty line, etc. we’d be able to definitively say there was malice afoot. Instead, it’s blurry. While the repetition of Stevie Nicks in the playlist could signal blandness and unoriginality in the listeners, it could also signal the potency of the artist’s messages. It’s white women channeling Stevie Nicks’ smart poetics, bold sexuality and self-worth. They cling to her music because it comforts them. It’s the music passed down from their parents. It’s their first piece of proof that women could rock and roll.
If “The Vagina Monologues” truly hinge on education and the celebration of womanhood, then women choosing songs that make them feel empowered and connected can’t be wrong. We can’t necessarily expect white members of the cast to most identify with, say, K-pop or the political hardcore music or afro-fusion they have no context for, but we shouldn’t shame them if they do. There’s nothing wrong with a playlist filled to the brim with Fleetwood Mac as long as the curators remain open to diverse artists and genres and refrain from deleting the song choices of others. Because Stevie Nicks’ music prompts empathy more than exclusionary practices, its empowerment is perfectly fine as long as it’s not at the expense of another.
The monologues and the vagina home song playlist do not include every shade of woman, but try to be as inclusive as possible in platforming issues. Here are ten sample songs that show she might not always be palatable, but she’s always palpable and present. She’s always woman. And for this, she will not apologize.
Patti Smith: “Gloria: In Excelsis Deo”
Chastity Belt: “Nip Slip”
Angel Olsen: “Woman”
Joni Mitchell: “All I Want”
Car Seat Headrest: “Unforgiving Girl (She’s Not An)”
Girlpool: “Cherry Picking”
Sleater- Kinney: “A New Wave”
X-Ray Spex: “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!”
Against Me!: “True Trans Soul Rebel”
Fleetwood Mac: “Silver Springs”
http://udreview.com/bluetracks-not-an-unforgiving-girl/