(Laughter)

I was worried.

That's why I began this piece.

I was worried about vaginas.

I was worried what we think about vaginas

and even more worried that we don't think about them.

I was worried about my own vagina.

It needed a context, a culture, a community of other vaginas.

There is so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them.

Like the Bermuda Triangle, nobody ever reports back from there.

(Laughter)

In the first place, it's not so easy to even find your vagina.

Women go days, weeks, months, without looking at it.

I interviewed a high-powered businesswoman;

she told me she didn't have time.

"Looking at your vagina," she said, "is a full day's work."

(Laughter)

"You've got to get down there on your back, in front of a mirror,

full-length preferred.

You've got to get in the perfect position with the perfect light,

which then becomes shadowed by the angle you're at.

You're twisting your head up, arching your back, it's exhausting."

She was busy; she didn't have time.

So I decided to talk to women about their vaginas.

They began as casual vagina interviews,

and they turned into vagina monologues.

I talked with over 200 women.

I talked to older women, younger women,

married women, lesbians, single women.

I talked to corporate professionals, college professors, actors, sex workers.

I talked to African-American women, Asian-American women,

Native-American women, Caucasian women, Jewish women.

OK, at first women were a little shy, a little reluctant to talk.

Once they got going, you couldn't stop them.

Women love to talk about their vaginas, they do.

Mainly because no one's ever asked them before.

(Laughter)

Let's just start with the word "vagina" -- vagina, vagina.

It sounds like an infection, at best.

Maybe a medical instrument.

"Hurry, nurse, bring the vagina!"

(Laughter)

Vagina, vagina, vagina.

It doesn't matter how many times you say the word,

it never sounds like a word you want to say.

It's a completely ridiculous, totally un-sexy word.

If you use it during sex, trying to be politically correct,

"Darling, would you stroke my vagina,"

you kill the act right there.

(Laughter)

I'm worried what we call them and don't call them.

In Great Neck, New York, they call it a Pussycat.

A woman told me there her mother used to tell her,

"Don't wear panties, dear, underneath your pajamas.

You need to air out your Pussycat."

(Laughter)

In Westchester, they call it a Pooki,

in New Jersey, a twat.

There's Powderbox, derriere, a Pooky, a Poochi, a Poopi,

a Poopelu, a Pooninana, a Padepachetchki, a Pal, and a Piche.

(Laughter)

There's Toadie, Dee Dee, Nishi, Dignity, Coochi Snorcher,

Cooter, Labbe, Gladys Seagelman, VA,

Wee wee, Horsespot, Nappy Dugout,

Mongo, Ghoulie, Powderbox, a Mimi in Miami,

a Split Knish in Philadelphia ...

(Laughter)

and a Schmende in the Bronx.

(Laughter)

I am worried about vaginas.

This is how the "Vagina Monologues" begins.

But it really didn't begin there.

It began with a conversation with a woman.

We were having a conversation about menopause,

and we got onto the subject of her vagina,

which you'll do if you're talking about menopause.

And she said things that really shocked me about her vagina --

that it was dried-up and finished and dead --

and I was kind of shocked.

So I said to a friend casually,

"Well, what do you think about your vagina?"

And that woman said something more amazing,

and then the next woman said something more amazing,

and before I knew it, every woman was telling me

I had to talk to somebody about their vagina

because they had an amazing story,

and I was sucked down the vagina trail.

(Laughter)

And I really haven't gotten off of it.

I think if you had told me when I was younger

that I was going to grow up, and be in shoe stores,

and people would scream out, "There she is, the Vagina Lady!"

I don't know that that would have been my life ambition.

(Laughter)

But I want to talk a little bit about happiness,

and the relationship to this whole vagina journey,

because it has been an extraordinary journey

that began eight years ago.

I think before I did the "Vagina Monologues,"

I didn't really believe in happiness.

I thought that only idiots were happy, to be honest.

I remember when I started practicing Buddhism 14 years ago,

and I was told that the end of this practice was to be happy,

I said, "How could you be happy and live in this world of suffering

and live in this world of pain?"

I mistook happiness for a lot of other things,

like numbness or decadence or selfishness.

And what happened through the course of the "Vagina Monologues"

and this journey is, I think I have come to understand

a little bit more about happiness.

There are three qualities I want to talk about.

One is seeing what's right in front of you,

and talking about it, and stating it.

I think what I learned from talking about the vagina

and speaking about the vagina, is it was the most obvious thing --

it was right in the center of my body and the center of the world --

and yet it was the one thing nobody talked about.

The second thing is that what talking about the vagina did

is it opened this door which allowed me to see

that there was a way to serve the world to make it better.

And that's where the deepest happiness has actually come from.

And the third principle of happiness, which I've realized recently:

Eight years ago, this momentum and this energy, this "V-wave" started --

and I can only describe it as a "V-wave" because, to be honest,

I really don't understand it completely; I feel at the service of it.

But this wave started, and if I question the wave,

or try to stop the wave or look back at the wave,

I often have the experience of whiplash

or the potential of my neck breaking.

But if I go with the wave,

and I trust the wave and I move with the wave,

I go to the next place, and it happens logically and organically and truthfully.

And I started this piece, particularly with stories and narratives,

and I was talking to one woman and that led to another woman

and that led to another woman.

And then I wrote those stories down,

and I put them out in front of other people.

And every single time I did the show at the beginning,

women would literally line up after the show,

because they wanted to tell me their stories.

And at first I thought, "Oh great, I'll hear about wonderful orgasms,

and great sex lives, and how women love their vaginas."

But in fact, that's not what women lined up to tell me.

What women lined up to tell me was how they were raped,

and how they were battered, and how they were beaten,

and how they were gang-raped in parking lots,

and how they were incested by their uncles.

And I wanted to stop doing the "Vagina Monologues,"

because it felt too daunting.

I felt like a war photographer who takes pictures of terrible events,

but doesn't intervene on their behalf.

And so in 1997, I said, "Let's get women together.

What could we do with this information

that all these women are being violated?"

And it turned out, after thinking and investigating,

that I discovered -- and the UN has actually said this recently --

that one out of every three women on this planet

will be beaten or raped in her lifetime.

That's essentially a gender;

that's essentially the resource of the planet, which is women.

So in 1997 we got all these incredible women together and we said,

"How can we use the play, this energy, to stop violence against women?"

And we put on one event in New York City, in the theater,

and all these great actors came -- from Susan Sarandon,

to Glenn Close, to Whoopi Goldberg --

and we did one performance on one evening,

and that catalyzed this wave, this energy.

And within five years,

this extraordinary thing began to happen.

One woman took that energy and she said, "I want to bring this wave,

this energy, to college campuses,"

and so she took the play and she said,

"Let's use the play and have performances once a year,

where we can raise money to stop violence against women

in local communities all around the world."

And in one year, it went to 50 colleges, and then it expanded.

And over the course of the last six years,

it's spread and it's spread and it's spread around the world.

What I have learned is two things:

one, that the epidemic of violence towards women is shocking; it's global;

it is so profound and it is so devastating,

and it is so in every little pocket of every little crater,

of every little society that we don't even recognize it,

because it's become ordinary.

This journey has taken me to Afghanistan,

where I had the extraordinary honor and privilege

to go into parts of Afghanistan under the Taliban.

I was dressed in a burqa and I went in with an extraordinary group,

called the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.

And I saw firsthand how women had been stripped

of every single right that was possible to strip women of --

from being educated, to being employed,

to being actually allowed to eat ice cream.

For those of you who don't know,

it was illegal to eat ice cream under the Taliban.

And I actually saw and met women who had been flogged

for being caught eating vanilla ice cream.

I was taken to the secret ice cream-eating place in a little town,

where we went to a back room, and women were seated

and a curtain was pulled around us, and they were served vanilla ice cream.

And women lifted their burqas and ate this ice cream.

And I don't think I ever understood pleasure until that moment,

and how women have found a way to keep their pleasure alive.

It has taken me, this journey, to Islamabad,

where I have witnessed and met women with their faces melted off.

It has taken me to Juarez, Mexico, where I was a week ago,

where I have literally been there in parking lots,

where bones of women have washed up

and been dumped next to Coca-Cola bottles.

It has taken me to universities all over this country,

where girls are date-raped and drugged.

I have seen terrible, terrible, terrible violence.

But I have also recognized, in the course of seeing that violence,

that being in the face of things and seeing actually what's in front of us

is the antidote to depression,

and to a feeling that one is worthless and has no value.

Because before the "Vagina Monologues,"

I will say that 80 percent of my consciousness was closed off

to what was really going on in this reality,

and that closing-off closed off my vitality and my life energy.

What has also happened is in the course of these travels --

and it's been an extraordinary thing --

is that every single place that I have gone to in the world,

I have met a new species.

And I really love hearing about all these species at the bottom of the sea.

And I was thinking about how being with these extraordinary people

on this particular panel,

that it's beneath, beyond and between,

and the vagina kind of fits into all those categories.

(Laughter)

But one of the things I've seen is this species --

and it is a species, and it is a new paradigm,

and it doesn't get reported in the press or in the media