Our unimpressive president

The thing that drives me nuts about the "Vagina Monologues" phenomenon are those questions asked for the "luminaries" involved in the project to answer. "If your vagina wore clothes, what would it wear?" and "If your vagina could talk, what would it say?"

Am I the only one that finds this insulting? My pudenda is not a Barbie doll and is fine in fur, thanks. Not to mention that last I checked, it didn't have teeth -- despite what the media may want men to believe.

-- K. Rutherford

Bravo to Camille Paglia and her spot-on comments regarding the absurd "Vagina Monologues," which I finally saw last month. In one of the bits, they were revealing the oh-so-insightful answers to the question of "If your vagina could talk, what would it say?" My answer: "I want a refund."

-- Peggy Mullaney, New York

Although I have yet to see "The Vagina Monologues," I couldn't agree more regarding your comments about the infection of college campuses with the women-as-victim mentality. I am a 30-year-old single mother who has recently returned to school. I was thrilled to be accepted in a course called "The Female Literary Imagination." The course outline says that through the readings we would "explore what it means -- to various women -- to be a woman." I expected to read works by female authors I had not been exposed to before. I expected to feel empowered by the great strides women have made in the literary community. I expected to read about the huge variety of experiences women have had in the last century.

Instead all I've read about are women who hate their bodies, who were sexually abused and confused and who tried to commit suicide throughout their entire adult lives. When we asked our instructor why this was, she replied that unfortunately to be successful in the literary world, women have had to have been considered sexy, and unfortunately this is what was considered sexy in the 20th century. I firmly believe that this lie is perpetuated by the academic community, which spews out generations of confused, timid and frustrated students. I am not arguing that these aspects (suicide, sexual confusion and sexual abuse) are not part of the "female experience," but rather that they are not the only experience.

-- Katie Grigor

I've been living in Europe for the past six years, rarely go home to the U.S., and I am shocked by the stuff I read in your columns. I went to college in California in the mid-'80s, and political correctness was then in its infancy. I cannot believe that the intellectual discourse in America has descended to this level. I cannot even talk to my friends here about such things. For Europeans, it's just too ridiculous! Of course a certain amount of "p.c.-ness" has descended upon the Continent, but the extent and seriousness of its viral spread have been contained by a certain amount of levelheadedness and perspective on life that European academics and students have, and that Americans don't. I can't say what it is except that people here are more realistic, if that's the word -- they tend to see things as they really are.

-- Isolde

Enjoyed your contributions to A&E's "It's Burlesque." I did think the program fell short exploring burlesque shows during their late heyday, through the WWII years and into the 1950s -- along with the shows that played carnivals. The burlesque theatres died out during the early part of the Vietnam period. There was still a circuit into the early '60s, and of course every major city had theatres. There is a lot of archival material, including recordings from Minsky's, when they were forced to cross the river and ended up in New Jersey. "Sopranos" types would have been there.

I saw burlesque shows in downtown Los Angeles during the late 1950s. During the early '60s, while a student at Cal, I attended the President in San Francisco. I remember the tattered chorus line, comic bits and rather innocent sexuality compared to present sitcoms where 30-somethings pretend they're 20 and obsess over getting laid.

George Eells, Cole Porter's biographer, was fascinated with burlesque and had a great archive of stills from shows and from companies that toured big carnivals. Called "girlie shows," they played the carnivals that toured state fairs, etc. A woman who died recently and was married to a member of the Los Angeles City Council was famous for stripping nude and doing what they called a "lunch act" in carnival girlie shows, where there was intimacy between performer and the male audience. Through the late '60s, when burlesque shows were really dead, I used to read Amusement Business and see carnivals wanting to book girlie shows, stating emphatically: "No Lunch Acts!"

-- Michael Grace, Los Angeles

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