Lollipop, anyone?

Wow- what an incredible read! Jessica Valenti is witty and intelligent, and this is definitely one of the easiest reads I've had the pleasure of exploring in all of my women's studies courses. Until reading this book, I had always defined virginity as a vagina that had no been penetrated by a penis. I guess I had the "everything but" principle in mind. However, now that I've read the first few chapters of this book, I am questioning whether virginity ever existed to begin with. What has really been sticking with me throughout these chapters is the argument Valenti brings up regarding morality and virginity. She says the virginity movement defines girls as moral, so long as they're chaste. The quotes from the founders of the purity ball kept using words like "...so they can be whole persons" when speaking of their motivation for creating the event. So they can be whole persons? Really?! It's an act. Sex is a physical action! It seems so absurd to me- it's like saying that if you take the physical action of eating a hamburger that you're no longer a whole person. So, virginity movement executives, you mean to tell me that I can volunteer at food shelters, receive a 4.0 grade point average in the honors college, work full time, support myself, build homes with habitat for humanity, and work with Engineers Without Borders to bring villages in Haiti clean water, and- if I have sex- I am not moral?! I am not a good, a whole, or a worthwhile person?! A bunch of rubbish, I say. I should hope my "future husband" would care much more about what I'm doing for the world and how I go about my daily life than whether or not I've slept with another person.

Forgive me if I being to rant, but these readings have really got me riled up. I agree with Valenti's point that it all seems to point back to the transfer of power, the ownership of women's bodies by men, as the motivation for this movement. "Integrity Balls" don't require the men to remain chaste, or to give their virginity to their mothers, but just not to run around "defiling" someone's "future wife". IT'S ALL ABOUT GIRLS' SEXUALITY! WHY WHY WHY is it not about men's?! Why can men have sex, and they're not less of a person for it? Why is it that a girl is considered dirty, and not the guy that slept with her? Valenti wonders herself how the penis has the power to transfer some sort of invisible filth to a woman's vagina. The analogy at the beginning of chapter 2 astounds me: "if you have sex it's like a boy unwrapped your lollipop and sucked on it". Well, you can suck it, you oppressing virginity movement! A woman is not "used up" when she has sex. If that were the case, then how could Mrs. Duggart (of "16 kids and counting") have had so many children? If a woman was "used up" then there would certainly be a limit. It implies there is a limit to the person, and that their value is attached to sex. So, if I become less of a person each time I have sex, then wouldn't I just eventually drop dead after having sex 10 or 15 times? I would at least become ill. Weirdly enough, I'm still healthy. Hmmm.

Values we should be instilling in young women should include things such as confidence to make decisions, political and social awareness so they can understand the complex web of interconnected social systems and how they help or hinder certain groups of individuals. We should be making sure women know how to fend for themselves, how to be independent, well spoken, and educated. We should make sure women understand the power they have- and the power they have yet to gain- to make a difference in the world, for less privileged people, or people in need. Education, confidence, persistence, and patience are what we should be teaching young women. We should teach them that sex, although complicated, is not a defining factor of their personhood or morality. We should teach them that the positive actions they take are what defines them as moral beings, not the actions they abstain from.

Growing up, my mother and father always talked about sex as a loving, healthy act, but not without its consequences. Nevertheless, it was very easy to get sucked into high school gossip, especially when the majority of your classmates are still "virgins" and to not develop a collective way of thinking about girls who are sexually active. Girls that had more than 1 sexual partner were considered dirty, without question. It was assumed that they would sleep with every other guy they ever dated from then on, much as in Valenti's case. We had a virginity pledge assembly, although my school was not an abstinence-only school. I think that if my high school classmates and I were taught that sex is normal, healthy, even pleasurable- as well as something to be dealt with carefully- then the attitude would not have been one of scorn and self-righteousness, but one of understanding and support. Valenti says it throughout the text- the virginity movement is NOT working. It's teaching girls to strive for an impossible standard, and to hate themselves when they fail.

A theme that keeps recurring in my feminist courses this semester is white privilege. Valenti touches on it a few times, and it's important to realize that women of color are not being treated the same, even in the virginity movement, as are white girls. I could write a whole essay on this, but I'll keep down to one sentence: it is very important to remain aware of whose sexuality the media focuses on, and why that certain group's sexuality and not others. It is important to be aware of how the media is portraying all different kinds of people, and to question the presupposed "truths" that are portrayed.

Valenti writes a lot about passivity. I never realized how prevalent the pressure was for women to remain passive. It's as though society is afraid that if women start becoming active and powerful, some catastrophic power will be released and the world will explode. She talks about how the idea of passivity has caused the sexualization of girls: since women are going to college at record-high rates, and becoming successful in business and the public sphere, the focus has been on younger and younger girls, since they are becoming the only symbols left of girlishness and passivity. Valenti says this poses some dangerous problems: The Lolita effect of the media, the encouragement of pedophilia and human trafficking of young girls, and grown women's tendency to try to revert back to youth and girlhood through plastic surgery, clothing, etc. We can create a more positive vision of women's sexuality if society were to focus on grown women, their sexiness, their grace that only comes with age and experience. I feel that then a lot of the pressure would be relieved and focus taken off of young girls, or women trying to be young. If only our society could be content with the way things are, and stop photo shopping or using models that are 15 years old as a representation of "real" women. I already feel, through experience, that girls are losing their girlhood. They are trying to grow up too quickly, become sex symbols too early, and change their bodies before they've even started developing. There shouldn't be padded bras for little girls! Let them play on the playground, instead of on plastic stripper poles that can be bought at Toys-R-Us. Good gracious, they have their entire lives to be women, but only a few precious years to be girls. Listen up, media: stop turning girls into women, and stop turning women into girls!