Author promotes positive body image

It wasn’t until doctors found a tumor the size of a melon in her uterus that Eve Ensler, decades into her career, connected with her body.

Having been raped by her father from age 5 to 10, the award-winning author of “The Vagina Monologues” spent most of her life in what she describes as a half-sleep, rejecting any relationship with her body at all. She described the journey of finally connecting with herself in a talk Thursday night at the IU Auditorium as part of the Ralph L. Collins Lecture Series.

It was also the first stop on her tour to promote her new book, “In the Body of the World,” in which she tells the story of her emotional and physical healing.

“My life has been very extreme,” Ensler said. “For years it’s been nothing but a place of pain, violence and badness. I feel like my body wrote this book so I could get all that out and own my body again.”

Writing the book, she said, saved her sanity.

“I wrote myself out of madness,” she said.
With her many bracelets jingling as she waved her hands with enthusiasm, an audience that took up the entire ground floor of the auditorium listened to her describe how cancer was an unlikely gift that reconnected her with family and taught her about love.

She said while she was in the hospital and suffering through chemotherapy, it was the kindness of nurses, doctors, friends and family that made her appreciate life in a way she never had before.

“Contrary to what I spent so much of my life believing, love has nothing to do with marriage or ownership,” she said. “It’s much bigger than that. The dedication that my friends and nurses showed me by rubbing my feet or cooking me eggs at five in the morning, now that’s how I came to know love.”

Audience members showed their own love toward Ensler by giving personal thanks, and sharing experiences and gifts.

One member wrote her a card “on behalf of the whole audience” that read: “Eve, goddess incarnate, Bloomington loves you.”

Ensler explained how acts of kindness like that can be powerful — on very large scales.

“I have, firsthand, seen it change and make laws,” she said. “My advice to you is to stop pleasing and start defying. We can do so much more than we think we can.”

Maria Talbert, associate director of the auditorium, said she’s thankful for Ensler’s message.

“I’m glad that a female figure of this caliber came to us,” Talbert said. “You could feel her energy as soon as you walked in the house. It was huge.”

Jennifer Weiss, an audience member and Bloomington resident, said she agreed.
“It was off-the-charts amazing,” Weiss said. “I’d like to think it’s a dawning of a new era in Bloomington. I want to believe there won’t be one more attack on women on campus.”

After her tumor was removed, Ensler said she had more energy than ever to act. As creator of the anti-violence movement called “V-Day,” she has traveled all over the world to try to stop violence against women.

An audience member asked if she’s ever been to a country where women weren’t being abused.

She said no.

“It’s all over the world,” she said. “No matter what country I’m in, I can close my eyes and hear the same story. It happens in homes, offices, schools. It’s patriarchy and it’s everywhere. And it needs to stop.”