Two Globies featured in Iowa State Vagina Monologues

Two Global Resource Systems (GRS) students performed in the Iowa State University Vagina Monologues on Feb. 15 and 16 in the Memorial Union Sun Room. The Vagina Monologues is an award-winning play divided into episodes that dives into consensual and non-consensual sexual experiences, body image, genital mutilation, encounters with reproduction, sex work, and several other topics through the eyes of women of various ages, races, sexualities, and other differences.

GRS senior Megan Frisvold performed a monologue for the first time this year.

“By performing with the monologues, it’s activism through art,” Frisvold said. “It’s a very important production and I think the message it portrays and delivers is really important for people to understand and realize. Women’s reproduction and women’s vaginas are taboo even still today. I think raising awareness about feminist issues on campus and gender violence is really important.”

Tasha Hill, GRS senior, performed and co-directed the monologues this year. This is her third year performing in the play.

“I feel like I can relate,” Hill said. “When I first started doing them, I was dealing with a lot of issues that the Vagina Monologues kind of covered, and I really didn’t know that a lot of women were also experiencing the same things. Through these different experiences that women of color experience, I feel like I can learn something from doing them and each year I learn something new from each piece.”

The Margaret Sloss Women’s Center, Student Union Board (SUB), and The Society for the Advancement of Gender Equity (SAGE) host the Vagina Monologues to raise awareness and funds for the Assault Care Center Extending Shelter and Support (ACCESS), a social services organization serving Ames and surrounding counties. Last year, the performance donated $5,266.19 to ACCESS.