For many years now, I feel like my own body struggle has been linked and connected with women I meet in the world. I think we're in this together.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a sense of solidarity between the speaker and women, highlighting shared struggles and experiences.
Eve Ensler's quote reflects the deep connection she feels to other women, suggesting that the personal battles one faces are often mirrored in the lives of others. This sense of unity indicates that struggles in self-acceptance and body image are collective issues among women, and it emphasizes the importance of mutual support and understanding in overcoming these challenges together.
In practice
In a speech about women's empowerment, this quote could be used to illustrate the shared experiences of women.
Dancing insists we take up space, and though it has no set direction, we go there together. Dance is dangerous, joyous, sexual, holy, disruptive, and contagious and it breaks the rules. It can happen anywhere, at anytime, with anyone and everyone, and it's free. Dance joins us and pushes us to go further and that is why it's at the center of ONE BILLION RISING.
Before cancer, I was obviously disconnected. I had a tumor the size of a mango inside me and didn't do anything about it. It wasn't like I didn't know something was wrong.
It's a weird thing about the truth: It protects you. What really makes you vulnerable is when you're lying because you're going to get caught. When you tell the truth, there's a strange relief that comes.
Well, the tyranny of masculinity and the tyranny of patriarchy I think has been much more deadly to men than it has to women. It hasn’t killed our hearts. It’s killed men’s hearts. It’s silenced them, it’s cut them off.
Why are women immobile? Because so many feel like they’re waiting for someone to say, "You’re good, you’re pretty, I give you permission."
Security is elusive. It's impossible. We all die. We all get old. We all get sick. People leave us. People change us. Nothing is secure.
Even as people take pride in their national independence, we know we are becoming more and more interdependent.
I talk to the audience, look into their eyes. I need them and they need me.
As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.
Passive aggressors who are adept at this will have trained themselves to remain calm, while you get irritated and emotional.
Being human, we are imperfect. That's why we need each other. To catch each other when we falter. To encourage each other when we lose heart. Some may lead; others may follow; but none of us can go it alone.
I think, though, as African-American women, we are always trained to value our community even at the expense of ourselves, and so we attempt to protect the African-American community.
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