V Day Festival 2009

The 2009 VDay:Until the Violence Stops Providence festival has finally come and gone. Last Spring I saw that the Vagina Monologues were coming to Providence and that they were having a week long festival to raise awareness about violence against women and girls both locally and globally. So I emailed the coordinator of the festival Nancy Rafi. Well, a simple email to see if she needed any volunteers for a day has changed my life forever. The next thing I knew I was hosting an event for the festival at my work for her, and shortly after she asked me to be on the VDay board. Now I am proud to say that a year later I have become a part of something so important and moving, and that all of the board's hard work these past nine months or so have paid off. The festival itself had around fifteen events, which you can see and find out more information about on our website www.peaceprovidence.com. I however, was responsible for two of them, The Good Body Fashion Show and The Red Tent Event.

The Good Body Fashion Show, inspired by the book written by Eve Ensler, was a fashion show for women of all shapes and sizes to express that all women are beautiful. We had it at the new NYLO Loft hotel. It was a lot of fun. I ran the back of the house and Nancy did the front. Then at the end we all walked the "cat walk" together, including Teagan who wore a special tutu Nancy bought her on Etsy. Teagan has become the youngest member of the board, as she has been attending meetings since in utero and shortly after. Everyone loves having her there. She now has a lot of VDay "Aunties".

Here are the models at a meeting we had. This picture ran in a local newspaper and magazine.

I didn't get any shots of just the hotel, which is too bad because it's awesome. Below is a picture of one of the reserved tables. It is full of seashells.

Me, Teagan, and Nancy backstage. Teagan is wearing her "DOES THIS DIAPER MAKE MY BUTT LOOK BIG" onesie, which I thought was very appropriate for the event.

Teagan was an angel the entire day and even enjoyed sitting at the registration table with Teddy. She is such an easy baby to take to things because she is very happy and will let anyone hold her. Teddy is one of two males on the VDay board. He is on the swat team in Boston and has an extremely low voice. Teagan just stares at him in amazement when he talks and sings to her.

Maria and one of the other models strutting their stuff. Maria and Nancy headed up the festival this year.

Teagan and me taking our stroll down the catwalk. You could hear the oos and aas following us as we walked and they all adored her. Thanks again for the tutu and matching hairband Nancy.

It was physically impossible for me to go to all of the events of the festival, but I definetely tried to go to as many as possible and volunteered at a few that weren't mine too. The first one I volunteered at was Anyone Of Us. Anyone Of Us is a performance piece of writings compiled by women in prisons around the US. It was a very moving piece with a panel discussion afterwards. There was a very good turn out for this event including the mayor.

The Vagina Monologues are of course an important part of the festival so this year I took Mike, his parents, and Joyce to see the production. It was Angela's birthday too, so we went out for breakfast and to the playground and then dropped the kids off at home with Amanda before we headed off.

We snapped a pic with Baby T before we left. (I have to say that neither of our outfits look very flattering in the picture below, but they are both really cute. Or at least I think so.)

The Vagina Monologues were performed in the ballroom at the Providence Renaissance Marriott. Outside of the ballroom was where I designed and built my Red Tent, which we had up for people to enjoy the day of the monologues and then for the Red Tent Event, which was the next day. It was a long weekend to say the least. Friday after a half day of work, I went to the hotel to start building the Red Tent with the help of Nancy and two others. I went home for dinner and then went back to work on it until around 3 am when I finally went home. Saturday morning we started the day early with breakfast with the Willards and Joyce and our day of activities, then Sunday was the last day of the festival and the Red Tent Event. So again I was at the hotel from 9am until breaking down the tent at 6pm. But it was all worth it. I am very excited with how the tent turned out.
But back to the Vagina Monologues... I thought it was a great performance and I even think Bruce and Mike enjoyed themselves too. I tried to sneak my camera around the table to get a picture of Bruce and his reaction to things. At the end he said, "I never knew so much about vaginas, and I'm glad I don't have one." We are too Bruce!

Mike and Bruce standing in front of my Red Tent.

And now for The Red Tent, which I have to admit I am very proud of. The idea behind the event was to have a day to honor women and to end the festival with a bang. We wanted women from all economic backgrounds to come together for a day of pampering and support. We split the ballroom into four suites, Beauty, Medical, Wellness, and Activist. You could get everything from a makeover, massage, blood pressure check, to taking a mini yoga or belly dance class. The Red Tent itself was then used as a safe place for women to gather and share their stories. We had social workers on hand for women who needed support during this time. It was a very peaceful and effective space. A couple of the sessions did end up getting pretty intense and we were happy that we had the necessary tools to help these women.
My role, in addition to helping Nancy with whatever she needed, was to design the tent, find local furniture stores etc. to donate their goods for the weekend, and then build it. Here are some pictures of the finished project.
The inside...





The outside...



Random pics from the day...

Teagan and two of her "Aunties". Victoria above and Tab below.



One of my ideas was to have a fake paparazzi taking pictures of you as you walked in on a red carpet leading to the elevators to the ballroom. This ended up being a lot of fun. We even got pics of some of the valet staff wearing our boas.

We also had a henna artist at the event. She did this woman's palm, so we had her do the VDay sign.


And finally, me and Nancy. Thank you Nancy for making me a part of all of this. I can't wait to see what kind of trouble we get ourselves into next!