“Nine and a half years old. I was sure I was bleeding to death,” freshman Emma Spaulding recited. Last weekend Spaulding and 13 other GW females performed The Vagina Monologues to packed crowds and enthusiastic applause.

The Feminist Majority Leadership Association sponsored the play in its fourth straight year at GW as part of the V-Day campaign, which combats violence against women worldwide. Playwright Eve Ensler’s founded the campaign in 1998 after The Vagina Monologues first gained national recognition. The campaign allows colleges, feminist groups and small theater organizations to obtain the temporary rights to the play if they follow the organization’s guidelines, like donating a percentage of proceeds to the charity of V-Day’s choice, including organizations in Sudan, Iraq and throughout D.C.

“I think The Vagina Monologues brings up issues such as rape, domestic abuse and being comfortable with your vagina. There are monologues that raise awareness of actually having a vagina,” freshman and show director Stephanie Kovacs said.

Sophomore Nichelle Ricketts-Lewis’ monologue focused on a young girl mentally abused by her mother and physically abused by a family friend. The girl eventually finds salvation in another woman who helps her get in touch with her “coochi snorcher.”

Rickets-Lewis said the mission of The Vagina Monologues is to educate and inform women. “I want to represent for women who’ve been in my role before in reality and on stage,” she said.

“(The Coochi Snorcher) is a whole other entity,” she continued. “A coochi snorcher has its own voice and personality. It makes you feel like, ‘Hey, I’m a woman.'”

“(It’s important) bearing a voice for multiple women whose stories wouldn’t have been heard otherwise,” said freshman Emma Spaulding, who participated as part of the group monologues, asking questions of three or four women on a panel, such as “What does your vagina smell like?” and “If you could dress your vagina up, what would it wear?” The responses express the views of over 200 women interviewed for the play’s initial research.

But The Vagina Monologues aren’t just about coochi snorchers and dressing up your vagina. Throughout the performances, serious monologues discuss female genital mutilation and abuse against women.

Members of FMLA said they often don’t feel that their issues aren’t taken seriously. “We don’t burn bras in mass protest against men. I think a lot of people on campus have that immediate assumption,” sophomore Sara Sherwood said. But through the play, FMLA hopes to raise awareness of imporant feminist issues.