promotion

Understanding the Myth

On Love Matters, a pro-life, pro-abstinence website, pictures of smiling young women who are "saving themselves" are featured next to quotes about virginity and marriage. Kimberly Gloudemans, Miss California Teen USA 1997, beams under her brunette coiffed hair and a rhinestone tiara. Next to her picture, the caption reads, "It's been echoed to teens over and over again. . . we have no morals, no dreams, and no future. But I know I am not a part of that same generation. In fact, millions of teenagers are finding out the same thing about themselves. . . We have morals and are standing up for what we believe in. . . Because of that I am saving sex for marriage."

I've always found the idea of "saving" your virginity intriguing: It's not as if we're packing our Saran-wrapped hymens away in the freezer, after all, or pasting them in scrapbooks (admittedly, not the best visual — my apologies). But packed-away virginities aside, the interesting — and dangerous — idea at play here is that of "morality." When young women are taught about morality, there's not often talk of compassion, kindness, courage, or integrity. There is, however, a lot of talk about hymens (though the preferred words are undoubtedly more refined — think "virginity" and "chastity"): if we have them, when we'll lose them, and under what circumstances we'll be rid of them.

While boys are taught that the things that make them men — good men — are universally accepted ethical ideals, women are led to believe that our moral compass lies somewhere between our legs. Literally. Whether it's the determining factor in our "cleanliness" and "purity" or the marker of our character, virginity has an increasingly dangerous hold over young women. It affects not only our ability to see ourselves as ethical actors outside of our own bodies, but also how the world interacts with us through social mores, laws, and even violence.

Pure Consequences

Women are pushing themselves and punishing themselves every day in order to fit into the narrow model of morality that virginity has afforded them. Some of us get unnecessary plastic surgery — down to our vaginas, which can be tightened, clipped, and "revirginized" — in order to seem younger. Others simply buy into old-school gender norms of ownership, dependence, and perpetual girlhood.

And don't be mistaken about the underlying motivations of our moral panic around the hypersexualization of young women. It's more about chastity than about promiscuity. T-shirts sold in teen catalogs with "I'm tight like Spandex" emblazoned across the front aren't announcing sexiness; they're announcing virginity. The same is true for "sexy schoolgirl" costumes or provocative pictures of Disney teen pop singers. By fetishizing youth and virginity, we're supporting a disturbing message: that really sexy women aren't women at all — they're girls.

By fetishizing youth and virginity, we're supporting a disturbing message: that really sexy women aren't women at all — they're girls.

If we're to truly understand the purity myth, we have to recognize that this modernized virgin/whore dichotomy is not only leading young women to damage themselves by internalizing the double standard, but also contributing to a social and political climate that is increasingly antagonistic to women and our rights.

Virginity fetishism has even made its way into politics and legislation. In 2007, Republican South Dakota representative Bill Napoli described his support for a ban on abortion that allowed no exceptions for rape or incest by relaying a (quite vivid) scenario to a reporter. He explained under what circumstances the procedure might be warranted: "A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated."

I found this moment so telling: Napoli couldn't help but let his misogyny and paternalism seep into his abortion sound bite, because, to him and to so many other men (and other legislators, for that matter), there's no separating virginity, violence, and control over women's bodies. When it comes to women who are perceived as "impure," there's a narrative of punishment that underscores U.S. policy and public discourse — be it legislation that limits reproductive rights through the assumption that women should be chaste before marriage, or a media that demonizes victims of sexual violence. And, sadly, if you look at everything from our laws to our newspapers, Napoli isn't as far out of the mainstream as we'd like to think.

Toward a New Morality

Women — especially young women, who are the most targeted in this virgin/whore straitjacket — are surviving the purity myth every day. And it has to stop. Our daughters deserve a model of morality that's based on ethics, not on their bodies.

It's high time to do away with outdated — and dangerous — notions of virginity. If young women's only ethical gauge is based on whether they're chaste, we're ensuring that they will continue to define themselves by their sexuality.

In The Purity Myth, I not only discuss what the purity myth is and reveal its consequences for women, but also outline a new way for us to think about young women as moral actors, one that doesn't include their bodies. Not just because we deserve as much, but also because our health, our emotional well-being, and even our lives depend on it.