0:00:01.000,0:00:03.000
I bet you're worried.

0:00:03.000,0:00:05.000
(Laughter)

0:00:05.000,0:00:09.000
I was worried. That's why I began this piece.

0:00:09.000,0:00:15.000
I was worried about vaginas. I was worried what we think about vaginas,

0:00:15.000,0:00:19.000
and even more worried that we don't think about them.

0:00:19.000,0:00:21.000
I was worried about my own vagina.

0:00:21.000,0:00:26.000
It needed a context, a culture, a community of other vaginas.

0:00:26.000,0:00:30.000
There is so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them.

0:00:30.000,0:00:35.000
Like the Bermuda Triangle, nobody ever reports back from there.

0:00:35.000,0:00:36.000
(Laughter)

0:00:36.000,0:00:40.000
In the first place, it's not so easy to even find your vagina.

0:00:40.000,0:00:43.000
Women go days, weeks, months, without looking at it.

0:00:43.000,0:00:45.000
I interviewed a high-powered businesswoman;

0:00:45.000,0:00:48.000
she told me she didn't have time.

0:00:48.000,0:00:51.000
"Looking at your vagina," she said, "is a full day's work."

0:00:51.000,0:00:52.000
(Laughter)

0:00:52.000,0:00:55.000
"You've got to get down there on your back, in front of a mirror,

0:00:55.000,0:00:58.000
full-length preferred. You've got to get in the perfect position,

0:00:58.000,0:01:02.000
with the perfect light, which then becomes shadowed by the angle you're at.

0:01:02.000,0:01:05.000
You're twisting your head up, arching your back, it's exhausting."

0:01:05.000,0:01:08.000
She was busy; she didn't have time.

0:01:08.000,0:01:11.000
So I decided to talk to women about their vaginas.

0:01:11.000,0:01:14.000
They began as casual vagina interviews,

0:01:14.000,0:01:17.000
and they turned into vagina monologues.

0:01:17.000,0:01:21.000
I talked with over 200 women. I talked to older women,

0:01:21.000,0:01:24.000
younger women, married women, lesbians, single women;

0:01:24.000,0:01:29.000
I talked to corporate professionals, college professors, actors, sex workers;

0:01:29.000,0:01:33.000
I talked to African-American women, Asian-American women,

0:01:33.000,0:01:37.000
Native-American women, Caucasian women, Jewish women.

0:01:37.000,0:01:42.000
OK, at first women were a little shy, a little reluctant to talk.

0:01:42.000,0:01:45.000
Once they got going, you couldn't stop them.

0:01:45.000,0:01:49.000
Women love to talk about their vaginas -- they do.

0:01:49.000,0:01:52.000
Mainly because no one's ever asked them before.

0:01:52.000,0:01:53.000
(Laughter)

0:01:53.000,0:01:58.000
Let's just start with the word "vagina" -- vagina, vagina.

0:01:58.000,0:02:03.000
It sounds like an infection at best. Maybe a medical instrument.

0:02:03.000,0:02:05.000
"Hurry, nurse, bring the vagina."

0:02:05.000,0:02:06.000
(Laughter)

0:02:06.000,0:02:09.000
Vagina, vagina, vagina. It doesn't matter how many times

0:02:09.000,0:02:12.000
you say the word, it never sounds like a word you want to say.

0:02:12.000,0:02:17.000
It's a completely ridiculous, totally un-sexy word.

0:02:17.000,0:02:20.000
If you use it during sex, trying to be politically correct,

0:02:20.000,0:02:26.000
"Darling, would you stroke my vagina," you kill the act right there.

0:02:26.000,0:02:27.000
(Laughter)

0:02:27.000,0:02:31.000
I'm worried what we call them and don't call them.

0:02:31.000,0:02:34.000
In Great Neck, New York, they call it a "pussy-cat."

0:02:34.000,0:02:36.000
A woman told me there, her mother used to tell her,

0:02:36.000,0:02:38.000
"Don't wear panties, dear, underneath your pajamas.

0:02:38.000,0:02:40.000
You need to air out your pussy-cat."

0:02:40.000,0:02:44.000
(Laughter)

0:02:44.000,0:02:49.000
In Westchester they call it a "pooky," in New Jersey a "twat."

0:02:49.000,0:02:54.000
There's powder-box, derriere, a pooky, a poochy, a poopy,

0:02:54.000,0:02:58.000
a poopaloo, a pooninana, a padepachetchki, a pow, and a peach.

0:02:58.000,0:03:00.000
(Laughter)

0:03:00.000,0:03:05.000
There's toadie, dee dee, nishi, dignity, coochie snorcher, cooter,

0:03:05.000,0:03:14.000
labi, gladis siegelman, va, wee-wee, whore-spot, nappy dugout,

0:03:14.000,0:03:20.000
mungo, ghoulie, powder-box, a "mimi" in Miami,

0:03:20.000,0:03:26.000
a "split knish" in Philadelphia, and a "schmende" in the Bronx.

0:03:26.000,0:03:27.000
(Laughter)

0:03:27.000,0:03:29.000
I am worried about vaginas.

0:03:29.000,0:03:32.000
This is how the "Vagina Monologues" begins.

0:03:32.000,0:03:38.000
But it really didn't begin there; it began with a conversation with a woman.

0:03:38.000,0:03:41.000
We were having a conversation about menopause,

0:03:41.000,0:03:43.000
and we got onto the subject of her vagina --

0:03:43.000,0:03:45.000
which you'll do if you're talking about menopause.

0:03:45.000,0:03:48.000
And she said things that really shocked me about her vagina --

0:03:48.000,0:03:52.000
that it was dried-up and finished and dead -- and I was kind of shocked.

0:03:52.000,0:03:55.000
And so I said to a friend casually, "Well, what do you think about your vagina?"

0:03:55.000,0:03:58.000
And that woman said something more amazing,

0:03:58.000,0:04:00.000
and then the next woman said something more amazing,

0:04:00.000,0:04:02.000
and before I knew it, every woman was telling me

0:04:02.000,0:04:05.000
I had to talk to somebody about their vagina because they had an amazing story,

0:04:05.000,0:04:08.000
and I was sucked down the vagina trail.

0:04:08.000,0:04:10.000
(Laughter)

0:04:10.000,0:04:13.000
And I really haven't gotten off it. I think if you had told me

0:04:13.000,0:04:16.000
when I was younger that I was going to grow up, and be in shoe stores,

0:04:16.000,0:04:19.000
and people were going to scream out, "There she is, the Vagina Lady!"

0:04:19.000,0:04:22.000
I don't know that that would have been my life ambition.

0:04:22.000,0:04:23.000
(Laughter)

0:04:23.000,0:04:26.000
But I want to talk a little bit about happiness and the relationship

0:04:26.000,0:04:28.000
to this whole vagina journey because

0:04:28.000,0:04:31.000
it has been an extraordinary journey that began eight years ago.

0:04:31.000,0:04:34.000
I think before I did the "Vagina Monologues"

0:04:34.000,0:04:37.000
I didn't really believe in happiness.

0:04:37.000,0:04:40.000
I thought that only idiots were happy, to be honest.

0:04:40.000,0:04:44.000
I remember when I started practicing Buddhism 14 years ago,

0:04:44.000,0:04:47.000
and I was told that the end of this practice was to be happy,

0:04:47.000,0:04:50.000
I said, "How could you be happy and live in this world of suffering

0:04:50.000,0:04:56.000
and live in this world of pain?" I mistook happiness for a lot of other things,

0:04:56.000,0:05:00.000
like numbness or decadence or selfishness.

0:05:00.000,0:05:02.000
And what happened through the course of the "Vagina Monologues"

0:05:02.000,0:05:05.000
and this journey is I think I have come to understand

0:05:05.000,0:05:07.000
a little bit more about happiness.

0:05:07.000,0:05:10.000
There're three qualities I want to talk about.

0:05:10.000,0:05:15.000
One is seeing what's right in front of you, and talking about it,

0:05:15.000,0:05:19.000
and stating it. I think what I learned from talking about the vagina,

0:05:19.000,0:05:22.000
and speaking about the vagina, is it was the most obvious thing --

0:05:22.000,0:05:25.000
it was right in the center of my body and the center of the world --

0:05:25.000,0:05:28.000
and yet it was the one thing nobody talked about.

0:05:28.000,0:05:32.000
The second thing is that what talking about the vagina did

0:05:32.000,0:05:35.000
is it opened this door which allowed me to see

0:05:35.000,0:05:38.000
that there was a way to serve the world to make it better.

0:05:38.000,0:05:42.000
And that's where the deepest happiness has actually come from.

0:05:42.000,0:05:46.000
And the third principle of happiness, which I've realized recently.

0:05:46.000,0:05:50.000
Eight years ago, this momentum and this energy, this "V-wave" started --

0:05:50.000,0:05:53.000
and I can only describe it as a "V-wave" because, to be honest,

0:05:53.000,0:05:57.000
I really don't understand it completely; I feel at the service of it.

0:05:57.000,0:06:00.000
But this wave started, and if I question the wave,

0:06:00.000,0:06:03.000
or try to stop the wave or look back at the wave,

0:06:03.000,0:06:06.000
I often have the experience of whiplash

0:06:06.000,0:06:10.000
or the potential of my neck breaking. But if I go with the wave,

0:06:10.000,0:06:13.000
and I trust the wave and I move with the wave, I go to the next place,

0:06:13.000,0:06:16.000
and it happens logically and organically and truthfully.

0:06:16.000,0:06:22.000
And I started this piece, particularly with stories and narratives,

0:06:22.000,0:06:25.000
and I was talking to one woman and that led to another woman

0:06:25.000,0:06:29.000
and that led to another woman, and then I wrote those stories down

0:06:29.000,0:06:31.000
and I put them out in front of other people.

0:06:31.000,0:06:33.000
And every single time I did the show at the beginning,

0:06:33.000,0:06:36.000
women would literally line up after the show

0:06:36.000,0:06:39.000
because they wanted to tell me their stories.

0:06:39.000,0:06:41.000
And at first I thought, "Oh great, I'll hear about wonderful orgasms,

0:06:41.000,0:06:45.000
and great sex lives, and how women love their vaginas."

0:06:45.000,0:06:48.000
But in fact, that's not what women lined up to tell me.

0:06:48.000,0:06:51.000
What women lined up to tell me was how they were raped,

0:06:51.000,0:06:54.000
and how they were battered, and how they were beaten,

0:06:54.000,0:06:56.000
and how they were gang-raped in parking lots,

0:06:56.000,0:06:58.000
and how they were incested by their uncles.

0:06:58.000,0:07:01.000
And I wanted to stop doing the "Vagina Monologues"

0:07:01.000,0:07:04.000
because it felt too daunting. I felt like a war photographer

0:07:04.000,0:07:08.000
who takes pictures of terrible events, but doesn't intervene on their behalf.

0:07:08.000,0:07:12.000
And so in 1997, I said, "Let's get women together.

0:07:12.000,0:07:17.000
What could we do with this information that all these women are being violated?"

0:07:17.000,0:07:21.000
And it turned out, after thinking and investigating,

0:07:21.000,0:07:24.000
that I discovered -- and the UN has actually said this recently --

0:07:24.000,0:07:27.000
that one out of every three women on this planet

0:07:27.000,0:07:30.000
will be beaten or raped in her lifetime.

0:07:30.000,0:07:35.000
That's essentially a gender; that's essentially a resource of the planet, which is women.

0:07:35.000,0:07:38.000
So in 1997 we got all these incredible women together and we said,

0:07:38.000,0:07:43.000
"How can we use the play, this energy, to stop violence against women?"

0:07:43.000,0:07:45.000
And we put on one event in New York City, in the theater,

0:07:45.000,0:07:48.000
and all these great actors came -- from Susan Sarandon,

0:07:48.000,0:07:51.000
to Glenn Close, to Whoopi Goldberg -- and we did one performance

0:07:51.000,0:07:57.000
on one evening, and that catalyzed this wave, this energy.

0:07:57.000,0:08:01.000
And within five years, this extraordinary thing began to happen.

0:08:01.000,0:08:05.000
One woman took that energy and she said, "I want to bring this wave,

0:08:05.000,0:08:09.000
this energy, to college campuses," and so she took the play

0:08:09.000,0:08:12.000
and she said, "Let's use the play and have performances of the play

0:08:12.000,0:08:15.000
once a year, where we can raise money to stop violence against women

0:08:15.000,0:08:18.000
in local communities all around the world."

0:08:18.000,0:08:21.000
And in one year, it went to 50 colleges, and then it expanded.

0:08:21.000,0:08:24.000
And over the course of the last six years, it's spread

0:08:24.000,0:08:27.000
and it's spread and it's spread and it's spread around the world.

0:08:27.000,0:08:33.000
What I have learned is two things. One: that the epidemic

0:08:33.000,0:08:37.000
of violence towards women is shocking; it's global;

0:08:37.000,0:08:39.000
it is so profound and it is so devastating,

0:08:39.000,0:08:42.000
and it is so in every little pocket of every little crater,

0:08:42.000,0:08:44.000
of every little society, that we don't even recognize it

0:08:44.000,0:08:50.000
because it's become ordinary. This journey has taken me to Afghanistan,

0:08:50.000,0:08:55.000
where I had the extraordinary honor and privilege to go into

0:08:55.000,0:08:58.000
parts of Afghanistan under the Taliban -- I was dressed in a burqa --

0:08:58.000,0:09:01.000
and I went in with an extraordinary group called the

0:09:01.000,0:09:04.000
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan,

0:09:04.000,0:09:07.000
and I saw firsthand how women had been stripped

0:09:07.000,0:09:11.000
of every single right that was possible to strip women of --

0:09:11.000,0:09:15.000
from being educated, to being employed, to being

0:09:15.000,0:09:17.000
actually allowed to eat ice cream.

0:09:17.000,0:09:20.000
For those of you who don't know it, it was illegal to eat ice cream under the Taliban.

0:09:20.000,0:09:24.000
And I actually saw and met women who had been flogged

0:09:24.000,0:09:27.000
by being caught eating vanilla ice cream.

0:09:27.000,0:09:31.000
And I was taken to the secret ice cream-eating place in a little town,

0:09:31.000,0:09:34.000
where we went to a back room, and women were seated

0:09:34.000,0:09:38.000
and a curtain was pulled around us, and they were served vanilla ice cream.

0:09:38.000,0:09:41.000
And women lifted their burqas and ate this ice cream,

0:09:41.000,0:09:44.000
and I don't think I ever understood pleasure until that moment,

0:09:44.000,0:09:48.000
and how women have found a way to keep their pleasure alive.

0:09:48.000,0:09:51.000
It has taken me, this journey, to Islamabad, where I have

0:09:51.000,0:09:54.000
witnessed and met women with their faces melted off.

0:09:54.000,0:09:58.000
It has taken me to Juarez, Mexico, where I was a week ago,

0:09:58.000,0:10:01.000
where I have literally been there in parking lots

0:10:01.000,0:10:04.000
where bones of women have washed up and been dumped

0:10:04.000,0:10:07.000
next to Coca-Cola bottles.

0:10:07.000,0:10:09.000
It has taken me to universities

0:10:09.000,0:10:12.000
all over this country where girls are date-raped and drugged.

0:10:12.000,0:10:16.000
I have seen terrible, terrible, terrible violence.

0:10:16.000,0:10:20.000
But I have also recognized, in the course of seeing that violence,

0:10:20.000,0:10:23.000
that being in the face of things and seeing actually

0:10:23.000,0:10:29.000
what's in front of us is the antidote to depression and to a feeling

0:10:29.000,0:10:31.000
that one is worthless and has no value.

0:10:31.000,0:10:33.000
Because before the "Vagina Monologues,"

0:10:33.000,0:10:36.000
I will say that 80 percent of my consciousness was closed off

0:10:36.000,0:10:39.000
to what was really going on in this reality.

0:10:39.000,0:10:44.000
And that closing-off closed off my vitality and my life energy.

0:10:44.000,0:10:46.000
What has also happened is in the course of these travels --

0:10:46.000,0:10:50.000
and it's been an extraordinary thing -- is that every single place

0:10:50.000,0:10:53.000
that I have gone to in the world, I have met a new species.

0:10:53.000,0:10:57.000
And I really love hearing about all these species at the bottom of the sea.

0:10:57.000,0:10:59.000
And I was thinking about how being with these

0:10:59.000,0:11:02.000
extraordinary people on this particular panel

0:11:02.000,0:11:05.000
that it's beneath, beyond, and between,

0:11:05.000,0:11:08.000
and the vagina kind of fits into all those categories.

0:11:08.000,0:11:09.000
(Laughter)

0:11:09.000,0:11:12.000
But one of the things I've seen is this species --

0:11:12.000,0:11:15.000
and it is a species, and it is a new paradigm,

0:11:15.000,0:11:17.000
and it doesn't get reported in the press or in the media

0:11:17.000,0:11:21.000
because I don't think good news ever is news,

0:11:21.000,0:11:23.000
and I don't think people who are transforming the planet

0:11:23.000,0:11:26.000
are what gets the ratings on TV shows.

0:11:26.000,0:11:29.000
But every single country I have been to -- and in the last six years

0:11:29.000,0:11:34.000
I've been to about 45 countries, and many tiny little villages and cities and towns --

0:11:34.000,0:11:38.000
I have seen something what I've come to call "vagina warriors."

0:11:38.000,0:11:42.000
A "vagina warrior" is a woman, or a vagina-friendly man,

0:11:42.000,0:11:46.000
who has witnessed incredible violence or suffered it,

0:11:46.000,0:11:50.000
and rather than getting an AK-47 or a weapon of mass destruction

0:11:50.000,0:11:55.000
or a machete, they hold the violence in their bodies;

0:11:55.000,0:12:00.000
they grieve it; they experience it; and then they go out and devote

0:12:00.000,0:12:04.000
their lives to making sure it doesn't happen to anybody else.

0:12:04.000,0:12:07.000
I have met these women everywhere on the planet.

0:12:07.000,0:12:09.000
And I want to tell a few stories because I believe that

0:12:09.000,0:12:12.000
stories are the way that we transmit information,

0:12:12.000,0:12:15.000
where it goes into our bodies. And I think that one of the things

0:12:15.000,0:12:18.000
about being at TED that's been very interesting

0:12:18.000,0:12:22.000
is that I live in my body a lot, and I don't live in my head very much anymore.

0:12:22.000,0:12:24.000
And this is a very heady place.

0:12:24.000,0:12:27.000
And it's been really interesting to be in my head

0:12:27.000,0:12:29.000
for the last two days; I've been very disoriented --

0:12:29.000,0:12:30.000
(Laughter)

0:12:30.000,0:12:34.000
because I think the world, the V-world, is very much in your body.

0:12:34.000,0:12:38.000
It's a body world, and the species really exists in the body,

0:12:38.000,0:12:40.000
and I think there's a real significance in us

0:12:40.000,0:12:43.000
attaching our bodies to our heads -- that that separation

0:12:43.000,0:12:49.000
has created a divide that is often separating purpose from intent.

0:12:49.000,0:12:55.000
And the connection between body and head often brings those things into union.

0:12:55.000,0:12:57.000
I want to talk about three particular people

0:12:57.000,0:13:01.000
that I've met, vagina warriors, who really transformed my understanding

0:13:01.000,0:13:03.000
of this whole principle and species,

0:13:03.000,0:13:06.000
and one is a woman named Marsha Lopez.

0:13:06.000,0:13:09.000
Marsha Lopez was a woman I met in Guatemala.

0:13:09.000,0:13:12.000
She was 14 years old, and she was in a marriage

0:13:12.000,0:13:15.000
and her husband was beating her on a regular basis,

0:13:15.000,0:13:19.000
and she couldn't get out because she was addicted to the relationship

0:13:19.000,0:13:22.000
and she had no money. Her sister was younger than her

0:13:22.000,0:13:27.000
and she applied -- we had a "stop rape" contest a few years ago in New York --

0:13:27.000,0:13:30.000
and she applied, hoping that she would become a finalist

0:13:30.000,0:13:32.000
and she could bring her sister.

0:13:32.000,0:13:36.000
She did become a finalist; she brought Marsha to New York.

0:13:36.000,0:13:38.000
And at that time we did this extraordinary V-Day

0:13:38.000,0:13:43.000
at Madison Square Garden where we sold out the entire testosterone-filled dome,

0:13:43.000,0:13:45.000
18,000 people standing up to say

0:13:45.000,0:13:49.000
"yes" to vaginas, which was really a pretty incredible transformation.

0:13:49.000,0:13:52.000
And she came, and she witnessed this, and she decided

0:13:52.000,0:13:54.000
that she would go back and leave her husband,

0:13:54.000,0:13:56.000
and that she would bring V-Day to Guatemala.

0:13:56.000,0:14:00.000
She was 21 years old. I went to Guatemala and she had sold out

0:14:00.000,0:14:03.000
the National Theater of Guatemala.

0:14:03.000,0:14:08.000
And I watched her walk up on stage in her red short dress, and high heels,

0:14:08.000,0:14:10.000
and she stood there and she said, "My name is Marsha.

0:14:10.000,0:14:14.000
I was beaten by my husband for five years.

0:14:14.000,0:14:17.000
He almost murdered me. I left and you can too."

0:14:17.000,0:14:21.000
And the entire 2,000 people went absolutely crazy.

0:14:21.000,0:14:23.000
There's a woman named Esther Chavez

0:14:23.000,0:14:26.000
who I met in Juarez, Mexico. And Esther Chavez

0:14:26.000,0:14:29.000
was a brilliant accountant in Mexico City; she was 72 years old;

0:14:29.000,0:14:31.000
and she was planning to retire.

0:14:31.000,0:14:36.000
She went to Juarez to take care of an ailing aunt, and over the course of it,

0:14:36.000,0:14:38.000
she began to discover what was happening to the murdered

0:14:38.000,0:14:41.000
and disappeared women of Juarez.

0:14:41.000,0:14:44.000
She gave up her life; she moved to Juarez;

0:14:44.000,0:14:48.000
she started to write the stories which documented the disappeared women.

0:14:48.000,0:14:50.000
300 women have disappeared

0:14:50.000,0:14:52.000
in a border town because they're brown and poor.

0:14:52.000,0:14:54.000
There has been no response to the disappearance,

0:14:54.000,0:14:56.000
and not one person has been held accountable.

0:14:56.000,0:15:01.000
She began to document it; she opened a center called Casa Amiga;

0:15:01.000,0:15:03.000
and in six years, she has literally brought this

0:15:03.000,0:15:05.000
to the consciousness of the world.

0:15:05.000,0:15:08.000
We were there a week ago, when there were 7,000 people on the street,

0:15:08.000,0:15:12.000
and it was truly a miracle. And as we walked through the streets,

0:15:12.000,0:15:15.000
the people of Juarez, who normally don't even come into the streets

0:15:15.000,0:15:18.000
because the streets are so dangerous, literally stood there and wept

0:15:18.000,0:15:21.000
to see that other people from the world had showed up

0:15:21.000,0:15:24.000
for that particular community.

0:15:24.000,0:15:28.000
There's another woman named Agnes. And Agnes, for me,

0:15:28.000,0:15:30.000
epitomizes what a vagina warrior is.

0:15:30.000,0:15:36.000
I met her three years ago in Kenya. And Agnes was mutilated as a little girl,

0:15:36.000,0:15:38.000
she was circumcised against her will

0:15:38.000,0:15:42.000
when she was 10 years old, and she really made a decision

0:15:42.000,0:15:46.000
that she didn't want this practice to continue anymore in her community.

0:15:46.000,0:15:49.000
So when she got older she created this incredible thing:

0:15:49.000,0:15:54.000
it's an anatomical sculpture of a woman's body; it's half a woman's body.

0:15:54.000,0:15:57.000
And she walked through the Rift Valley, and she had

0:15:57.000,0:16:00.000
vagina and vagina replacement parts where she would teach

0:16:00.000,0:16:04.000
girls and parents and boys and girls what a healthy vagina looks like,

0:16:04.000,0:16:08.000
and what a mutilated vagina looks like. And in the course of her travel

0:16:08.000,0:16:11.000
she walked literally for eight years through the Rift Valley,

0:16:11.000,0:16:15.000
through dust, through sleeping on the ground -- because the Masais are nomads,

0:16:15.000,0:16:19.000
and she would literally have to find them, and they would move,

0:16:19.000,0:16:24.000
and she would find them again. She saved 1,500 girls from being cut.

0:16:24.000,0:16:27.000
And in that time she created an alternative ritual which involved

0:16:27.000,0:16:30.000
girls coming of age without the cut.

0:16:30.000,0:16:32.000
When we met her three years ago,

0:16:32.000,0:16:34.000
we said, "What could V-Day do for you?"

0:16:34.000,0:16:37.000
And she said, "Well, if you got me a Jeep, I could get around a lot faster."

0:16:37.000,0:16:38.000
(Laughter)

0:16:38.000,0:16:41.000
So we bought her a Jeep. And in the year that she had the Jeep,

0:16:41.000,0:16:45.000
she saved 4,500 girls from being cut. So then we said to her,

0:16:45.000,0:16:47.000
"Agnes, well, what else could we do for you?" And she said,

0:16:47.000,0:16:49.000
"Well, Eve, you know, if you gave me some money,

0:16:49.000,0:16:53.000
I could open a house and girls could run away and they could be saved."

0:16:53.000,0:16:56.000
And I want to tell this little story about my own beginnings

0:16:56.000,0:17:00.000
because it's very interrelated to happiness and Agnes.

0:17:00.000,0:17:03.000
When I was a little girl -- and I grew up

0:17:03.000,0:17:07.000
in a wealthy community; it was an upper-middle class white community,

0:17:07.000,0:17:09.000
and it had all the trappings

0:17:09.000,0:17:14.000
and the looks of a perfectly nice, wonderful, great life.

0:17:14.000,0:17:17.000
And everyone was supposed to be happy in that community

0:17:17.000,0:17:20.000
and, in fact, my life was hell. I lived with an alcoholic father

0:17:20.000,0:17:23.000
who beat me and molested me, and it was all inside that.

0:17:23.000,0:17:28.000
And always as a child I had this fantasy that somebody would come and rescue me.

0:17:28.000,0:17:31.000
And I actually made up a little character whose name was Mr. Alligator,

0:17:31.000,0:17:34.000
and I would call him up when things got really bad,

0:17:34.000,0:17:36.000
and I would say it was time to come and pick me up.

0:17:36.000,0:17:40.000
And I would go and pack a little bag and I would wait for Mr. Alligator to come.

0:17:40.000,0:17:42.000
Now, Mr. Alligator never did come,

0:17:42.000,0:17:47.000
but the idea of Mr. Alligator coming actually saved my sanity

0:17:47.000,0:17:49.000
and made it OK for me to keep going because I believed,

0:17:49.000,0:17:53.000
in the distance, there would be someone coming to rescue me.

0:17:53.000,0:17:57.000
Cut to 40-some-odd years later, we go to Kenya,

0:17:57.000,0:18:01.000
and we're walking, we arrive at the opening of this house --

0:18:01.000,0:18:03.000
and Agnes hadn't let me come to the house for days

0:18:03.000,0:18:05.000
because they were preparing this whole ritual.

0:18:05.000,0:18:08.000
And I want to tell you a great story. When Agnes first started

0:18:08.000,0:18:12.000
fighting to stop female genital mutilation in her community,

0:18:12.000,0:18:15.000
she had become an outcast, and she was exiled and she was slandered,

0:18:15.000,0:18:17.000
and the whole community turned against her.

0:18:17.000,0:18:20.000
But, being a vagina warrior, she kept going,

0:18:20.000,0:18:23.000
and she kept committing herself to transforming consciousness.

0:18:23.000,0:18:28.000
And in the Masai community, goats and cows are the most valued possession.

0:18:28.000,0:18:32.000
They're like the Mercedes-Benz of the Rift Valley.

0:18:32.000,0:18:36.000
And she said, two days before the house opened, two different people

0:18:36.000,0:18:39.000
arrived to give her a goat each, and she said to me,

0:18:39.000,0:18:44.000
"I knew then that female genital mutilation would end one day in Africa."

0:18:44.000,0:18:47.000
Anyway, we arrived, and when we arrived,

0:18:47.000,0:18:51.000
there were hundreds of girls dressed in red, homemade dresses --

0:18:51.000,0:18:54.000
which is the color of the Masai and the color of V-Day --

0:18:54.000,0:18:57.000
and they greeted us, and they had made up these songs

0:18:57.000,0:18:59.000
that they were singing about the end of suffering,

0:18:59.000,0:19:02.000
and the end of mutilation, and they walked us down the path.

0:19:02.000,0:19:04.000
And it was a gorgeous day in the African sun,

0:19:04.000,0:19:07.000
and the dust was flying and the girls were dancing,

0:19:07.000,0:19:12.000
and there was this house, and it said, "V-Day Safe House for the Girls."

0:19:12.000,0:19:17.000
And it hit me in that moment that it had taken 47 years,

0:19:17.000,0:19:20.000
but that Mr. Alligator had finally shown up.

0:19:20.000,0:19:25.000
And he'd show up obviously in a form that it took me a long time to understand,

0:19:25.000,0:19:28.000
which is that when we give

0:19:28.000,0:19:34.000
in the world what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us.

0:19:34.000,0:19:37.000
And I feel, in the last eight years,

0:19:37.000,0:19:40.000
that this journey, this miraculous vagina journey,

0:19:40.000,0:19:47.000
has taught me this really simple thing, which is that happiness exists in action;

0:19:47.000,0:19:51.000
it exists in telling the truth and saying what your truth is;

0:19:51.000,0:19:55.000
and it exists in giving away what you want the most.

0:19:55.000,0:19:59.000
And I feel that knowledge and that journey

0:19:59.000,0:20:01.000
has been an extraordinary privilege,

0:20:01.000,0:20:05.000
and I feel really blessed to have been here today to communicate that to you.

0:20:05.000,0:20:07.000
Thank you very much.

0:20:07.000,0:20:10.000
(Applause)