The Purity Myth (3 page)

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sold with dowries and business deals, it’s being defined as little more than a stand-in for actual morality.

It’s genius, really. Shame women into being chaste and tell them that all they have to do to be “good” is not have sex. (Of course, chastity and purity, as defined by the virginity movement, are not just about abstaining sexually so much as they’re about upholding a specific, passive model of womanhood. But more on this later.)

For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer—the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you’ve never had sex, you’re a “good” (i.e., “moral”) girl and therefore wor- thy of praise.

Present-day American society—whether through pop culture, religion, or institutions—conflates sexuality and morality constantly. Idolizing vir- ginity as a stand-in for women’s morality means that nothing else matters— not what we accomplish, not what we think, not what we care about and work for. Just if/how/whom we have sex with. That’s all.

Just look at the women we venerate for not having sex: pageant queens who run on abstinence platforms, pop singers who share their virginal status, and religious women who “save themselves” for marriage. It’s an interesting state of affairs when women have to simply do, well,
nothing
in order to be considered ethical role models. As Feministing.com commenter electron- Blue noted in response to the 2008
New York Times Magazine
article “Stu- dents of Virginity,” on abstinence clubs at Ivy League colleges, “There were a WHOLE LOTTA us not having sex at Harvard . . . but none of us thought that that was special enough to start a club about it, for pete’s sake.”
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But for plenty of women across the country, it
is
special. Staying “pure” and “innocent” is touted as the greatest thing we can do. However, equating

this inaction with morality not only is problematic because it continues to tie women’s ethics to our bodies, but also is downright insulting because it suggests that women can’t be moral actors. Instead, we’re defined by what we don’t do—our ethics are the ethics of passivity. (This model of ethics fits in perfectly with how the virginity movement defines the ideal woman.)

Proponents of chastity and abstinence, though, would have us believe that abstaining indeed requires strength and action. Janie Fredell, one of the students quoted in the above-mentioned
New York Times Magazine
piece, penned a college newspaper article claiming that virginity is “rooted

. . . in the notion of strength.”

“It takes a strong woman to be abstinent, and that’s the sort of woman I want to be,” Fredell told the magazine.
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Her rhetoric of strength is part of a growing trend among the conservative virginity-fetish sect, which is likely the result of virginity movement leaders seeing how question- able the “passive virgin” is in modern society. Now we’re seeing virginity proponents assert their fortitude. Conservative messages aimed at young men even call on them to be “virginity warriors,” driving home the mes- sage that it’s men’s responsibility to safeguard virginity for their female counterparts, simultaneously quashing any fears of feminization that boys may have surrounding abstinence.

Perhaps it’s true that in our sex-saturated culture, it does take a cer- tain amount of self-discipline to resist having sex, but restraint does not equal morality. And let’s be honest: If this were simply about resisting peer pressure and being strong, then the women who have sex because they actively want to—as appalling as that idea might be to those who advocate abstinence—wouldn’t be scorned. Because the “strength” involved in these women’s choice would be about doing what they want despite pressure to

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the contrary, not about resisting the sex act itself. But women who have sex are often denigrated by those who revere virginity. As feminist blogger Jill Filipovic noted in response to Fredell:

I appreciate and applaud the personal strength of individuals who decide abstinence is the best choice for them. But what I can’ t support is the con- stant attacks on sexually active people. People who have sex do not feel a constant need to tell abstinent people that their human dignity has been

compromised, or that they’re dirty, or that they are secretly unhappy, or that they’re headed for total life ruin.
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And that is exactly what young women are taught, thanks in no small part to conservative backlash. In 2005, for example, the evangelical Chris- tian group Focus on the Family came out with a study reporting that hav- ing sex before the age of eighteen makes you more likely to end up poor and divorced.
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Given that the median age for sexual initiation for all Ameri- cans—male and female—is seventeen, I wonder how shocked most women will be when they learn that they have a life of poverty-stricken spinster- hood to look forward to!

But it’s not only abstinence education or conservative propaganda that are perpetuating this message; you need look no further than pop culture for stark examples of how young people—especially young women—are taught to use virginity as an easy ethical road map.

A 2007 episode of the MTV documentary series
True Life
featured celibate youth.
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Among the teens choosing to abstain because of disease concerns and religious commitments was nineteen-year-old Kristin from Nashville, Tennessee. Kristin had cheated on her past boyfriends, and told

the camera she’d decided to remain celibate until she feels she can be faithful to her current boyfriend. Clearly, Kristin’s problem isn’t sex—it’s trust. But instead of dealing with the actual issues behind her relationship woes, this young woman was able to circumvent any real self-analysis by simply claim- ing to be abstinent. So long as she’s chaste, she’s good.

Or consider singer and reality television celebrity Jessica Simpson, who has made her career largely by playing on the sexy-virgin stereotype. Simpson, the daughter of a Baptist youth minister, started her singing career by touring Chris- tian youth festivals and True Love Waits events. Even when she went main- stream, she publicly declared her virginity—stating that her father had given her a promise ring when she was twelve years old—and spoke of her intention to wait to have sex until marriage. Meanwhile, not surprisingly, Simpson was being marketed as a major sex symbol—all blond hair, breasts, and giggles. Especially giggles. Simpson’s character (and I use the word “character” because it’s hard to know what was actually her and not a finely honed image) was sold as the arche- typal dumb blond. Thoughtless moments on
Newlyweds,
the MTV show that fol- lowed her short-lived marriage to singer Nick Lachey, became nationally known sound bites, such as Simpson’s wondering aloud whether tuna was chicken or fish, since the can read “Chicken of the Sea.”

Despite Simpson’s public persona as an airhead (as recently as 2008, she was featured in a Macy’s commercial as not understanding how to flick on a light switch), women are supposed to want to be her, not only because she’s beautiful by conventional standards, but also because she adheres to the social structures that tell women that they exist purely for men: as a virgin, as a sex symbol, or, in Simpson’s case, as both. It doesn’t matter that Simp- son reveals few of her actual thoughts or moral beliefs; it’s enough that she’s “pure,” even if that purity means she’s a bit of a dolt.

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For those women who can’t keep up the front as well as someone like Simpson, they suffer heaps of judgment—especially when they fall off the pedestal they’re posed upon so perfectly. American pop culture, especially, has an interesting new trend of venerating and fetishizing “pure” young women—whether they’re celebrities, beauty queens, or just everyday young women—simply to bask in their eventual fall.

And no one embodies the “perfect” young American woman like beauty queens. They’re pretty, overwhelmingly white, thin, and eager to please.* And, of course, pageant queens are supposed to be as pure as pure can be. In fact, until 1999, the Miss America pageant had a “purity rule” that barred divorced women and those who had obtained abortions from entering the contest— lest they sully the competition, I suppose.
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So in 2006, when two of those “perfect” girls made the news for being in scandalous photos on the Internet, supposed promiscuity, or a combination thereof, Americans were transfixed.

First, twenty-year-old Miss USA Tara Conner was nearly stripped of her title after reports surfaced that she frequented nightclubs, drank, and dated. Hardly unusual behavior for a young woman, regardless of how many tiaras she may have.

The
New York Daily News
could barely contain its slut-shaming glee when it reported on the story: “‘She really is a small-town girl. She just went wild when she came to the city,’ one nightlife veteran said. ‘Tara just couldn’t handle herself. They were sneaking those [nightclub] guys in and out of the

* Who, after all, can maintain a pearly white perma-grin through humiliating bath- ing suit competitions and inane questions—all for scholarships that are paltry in comparison to the money spent on gowns and coaches—other than women looking for some serious validation?

apartment’ . . . Conner still brought boyfriends home. . . . Soon she broke up with her hometown fiancé and started dating around in the Manhattan night- club world. . . . ”
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Instead of having her crown taken away, however, Conner was publicly “forgiven” by Miss USA co-owner Donald Trump, who appeared at a press conference to publicly declare he was giving the young woman a second chance.
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In case you had any doubts about whether this controversy was all tied up with male ownership and approval, consider the fact that Trump later reportedly considered giving his permission for Conner to pose for
Playboy
magazine. He played the role of dad, pimp, and owner, all rolled into one.
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Mere days later, Miss Nevada USA, twenty-two-year-old Katie Rees, was dethroned after pictures of her exposing one of her breasts and mooning the camera were uncovered.
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When you’re on a pedestal, you have a long way to fall.

And, of course, it’s impossible to talk about tipped-over pedestals with- out mentioning pop singer Britney Spears. Spears, first made famous by her hit song “Baby One More Time” and its accompanying video, in which she appeared in a Catholic schoolgirl mini-uniform, was very much the American purity princess. She publicly declared her virginity and belief in abstinence before marriage, all the while being marketed—much like Simpson was—as a sex symbol. But unlike Simpson, Spears fell far from grace in the eyes of the American public. The most obvious indications of her decline were splashed across newspapers and entertainment weeklies worldwide—a breakdown during which she shaved her head in front of photographers, and various pic- tures of her drunk and sans panties. But Spears began distancing herself from the virgin ideal long before these incidents hit the tabloids.

First, Spears got some press for moving in with then-boyfriend and

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fellow pop star Justin Timberlake. But the sexist brouhaha began in earnest when Spears was no longer considered “attractive,” because she started to gain weight, got pregnant, and no longer looked like a little girl. Pictures of her cellulite popped up on websites and gossip magazines nationwide, along with guesstimations about her weight and jokes about her stomach. Because “purity” isn’t just about not having sex, it’s about not being a woman—and instead being in a state of perpetual girlhood (more on this in Chapter 3).

Shaming young women for being sexual is nothing new, but it’s curious to observe how the expectation of purity gets played out through the women who are supposed to epitomize the feminine ideal: the “desirable” virgin. After all, we rarely see women who aren’t conventionally beautiful idolized for their abstinence. And no matter how “good” you are otherwise—even if you’re an all-American beauty queen—if you’re not virginal, you’re shamed.

The desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. She’s young, white, and skinny. She’s a cheerleader, a baby sitter; she’s accessible and eager to please (remember those ethics of passivity!). She’s never a woman of color. She’s never a low-income girl or a fat girl. She’s never disabled. “Virgin” is a des- ignation for those who meet a certain standard of what women, especially younger women, are supposed to look like. As for how these young women are supposed to act? A blank slate is best.

s e l l in g v i r g ini t y

Unfortunately, this morality model of virginity—in which women’s morals and ethical ability are defined solely by their sexual status—isn’t the only type the virginity movement is pushing. Viewing virginity as a commodity—as it was seen back in the days in which daughters were exchanged as property— lives on, just in less obvious ways (though, arguably, much more insidiously).