{"id":1884,"date":"2010-05-10T01:00:35","date_gmt":"2010-05-10T06:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1884"},"modified":"2010-05-10T01:00:35","modified_gmt":"2010-05-10T06:00:35","slug":"intersectional-feminist-review-i-am-an-emotional-creature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2010\/05\/10\/intersectional-feminist-review-i-am-an-emotional-creature\/","title":{"rendered":"Intersectional Feminist Review – I Am An Emotional Creature"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most readers know Eve Ensler best as the anti-violence activist and star of the feminist world-traveling production, The Vagina Monologues.<\/em> She has followed this seminal play with other popular works, highlighting the difficulties of women surviving war (Necessary Targets<\/em>), women’s endless scrutiny of physical imperfections (The Good Body<\/em>), and even her own experiences of finding self-protection as a survivor of abuse (Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security Obsessed World<\/em>).\u00a0 In her latest book I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, <\/em>Ensler sets out to portray the thoughts, issues, and desires of adolescent girls today.\u00a0 \"\"<\/p>\n

With varying degrees of success, Ensler offers a broad spectrum of experiences that keep the reader engaged with the work, even as much of the language suggests an adult perspective of a teenager’s world.\u00a0 This is not to say that Ensler portrays her subjects with insensitivity or condescension; as a reader, I believed in Ensler’s earnest hopes that the book is “a call to listen to the voice inside you that might want something different, that hears, that knows, the way only you can hear and know.\u00a0 It’s a call to your original girl self, to your emotional creature self, to move at your speed, to walk with your step, to wear your color.”\u00a0 But there’s something very trivializing about the voice of certain girls within the book, particularly Ensler’s uninspired perspective on the American suburban teen.\u00a0 In “Let Me In,” the speaker obsesses over purple UGGs and whether there’s room for her at the popular kid’s table in the cafeteria.\u00a0 The speaker comes off false, shrill, self-absorbed and petty.\u00a0 Contrast that monologue with the girls of Bulgaria (“I Have 35 Minutes Before He Comes Looking for Me”) or Palestine (“Sky Sky Sky”), young women who engage with their environment, politics, families, and communities.\u00a0 They are also poor, suffering, in desperate need of aid. This dichotomy establishes the class and race privilege of the white Western girl, sure, but it’s hardly empowering for the girl of color whose only shown in a victimized, one-dimensional point of view.<\/p>\n

This is really the heart of my issue with Ensler.\u00a0 As a famous, successful and established playwright, Ensler was in the perfect position to work with young women in writing and publishing THEIR monologues.\u00a0 Yet Ensler only credits a V-Girls Advisory Circle.\u00a0 Wouldn’t it have been better to let these young women from Palestine, China, Israel, Iran, France, and the U.S. write their own stories in their own authentic voices?\u00a0 Much of this work feels like a co-optation of experience, a wasted opportunity to give voice to young women’s lives, despite the protestations of the author.<\/p>\n

If readers are hoping to expand their ideas of what it means to be a teen girl in different parts of the world, this book won’t do much to expand the story.\u00a0 Ensler’s intentions are noble, but like the voices of the young women portrayed in I Am An Emotional Creature, <\/em>they are slightly off-the-mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most readers know Eve Ensler best as the anti-violence activist and star of the feminist world-traveling production, The Vagina Monologues. She has followed this seminal play with other popular works, highlighting the difficulties of women surviving war (Necessary Targets), women’s endless scrutiny of physical imperfections (The Good Body), and even her own experiences of finding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1914,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21116],"tags":[1716,21327,2722,21395,778,100],"class_list":["post-1884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-intersectional-feminist-2","tag-book-review","tag-eve-ensler","tag-feminist","tag-girls","tag-intersectionality","tag-youth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1914"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}