Last night at These Girls, a night of monologues hosted by Glamour magazine at Joe’s Pub, Olivia Wilde told the audience, which included her boyfriend, Jason Sudeikis, about the end of her first marriage. “I felt like my vagina died,” she said. “Turned off. Lights out … And you can lie to your relatives at Christmas dinner and tell them everything on the home front is just peachy. But you cannot lie to your vagina.”
What followed her divorce was a man-eating sex bender that ultimately left her feeling so lonely she considered “a soft kind of lesbian relationship, just gentle kissing and scissoring.” That is, until she met someone — hi, Jason! —and fell “blissfully, hopefully, wildly in love.” Wilde said she was happy in her new relationship, except for the nagging worry that the hot monogamy (“We have sex like Kenyan marathon runners”) might not last. So, in efforts to protect herself, she outlined the rules for Olivia Land, a relationship Utopia:
In Olivia Land, relationships can legally only last seven years, without an option to renew. That way it never goes stale. Can you imagine, if we only had seven years? We’d be so nice to each other, so kind, and appreciative and enthusiastic, like we were eating a really expensive bowl of pasta! And in Olivia Land people wouldn’t cheat nearly as much because there wouldn’t be the threat of spending forever with one bedfellow. It just wouldn’t be legal. There’s the issue of kids. Okay this is fun.
In Olivia Land, all the kids go to boarding school at seven. It’s like in Harry Potter!
I would like to legalize prostitution. Hiring a sex worker in Olivia Land would be as easy, hygienic, and inexpensive as getting a pedicure. That way when away on business or just not in the mood, we could just hire a hooker for our loved one and keep them uninterested in cheating and keep them satisfied. These particular hookers would obviously have to be mute and possibly cross-eyed.
In Olivia Land, the streets are paved with dark chocolate, and all the people are free of body hair and menstrual cramps.”
At the after-party, where other performers including Rashida Jones, Lauren Miller, and Aubrey Plaza were also hanging out, we asked Wilde if Sudeikis had already heard the rules of Olivia Land. “Not before tonight,” she told us. “Ultimately, the monologue was supposed to suggest that Olivia Land doesn’t work either,” she added. As she explained it onstage, “the seven years thing” gets complicated, too; she imagines her boyfriend as “an old Donald Sutherland type, all white eyebrows and padded elbows surrounded by ten thousand of our adorable grandchildren” — and then an expiration date feels sorta sad. “We’re left with the question,” she says. “And we have to live the question.” So, how can a woman tell if it’s right? Listen to your vagina, Wilde advises. “Sometimes your vagina dies,” she says. “Then you know it’s time to go. There’s no reason to sacrifice your womanhood and femininity for some sort of weird feeling of responsibility to something that may not be right. I feel like far too many women do that.” Also, “[Men] are not allowed to be the only ones thinking with their genitals. We think with our pussies.”
