Virgin America

February 19, 2013

You will take his virginity in a room full of pillows, this boy you’ll have met only days before. Afterwards he’ll smiled proudly, looking down at you from his place between your legs. You’ll laugh then, but feel slightly sorry that his first time will have been a quickie at some party with a girl he hardly knew. You won’t even have taken your dress off.

The next day your roommate will say to you,

“You wrote yourself into his history.”

And this will seem true. But why?

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines virginity as the state of never having had sexual intercourse. Throughout the course of human history, though, virginity has always meant more than that.

Chastity has long been considered a virtue, and the act of intercourse considered extremely sacred. The unbroken hymen once symbolized a pure spirit. The Virgin Mary is praised for her continence, as are earlier pagan virgins who gave birth to great sons, such as Dionysus, Heracles and Mithras. In today’s society, though, virginity is often depicted as a point of embarrassment.

As Shoshanna’s old Camp Ramah friend Matt tells her in season one of Girls, “Virgins get attached. Or they bleed. You get attached when you bleed.” Similar virginal stigma is depicted in countless other movie and television plots, from The Forty Year Old Virgin to Grey’s Anatomy. “Why am I even listening to you? You’re a virgin who can’t drive” is perhaps the most scorching insult in 90s cinema (delivered by Brittany Murphy’s character in Clueless). Such pop culture depictions seem to reflect the pervasive viewpoint of American society. Among unmarried women aged 25 to 29, only seven percent have not had sex. Between 30- and 34- year olds, that number drops to five percent.

Though a marked shift in the connotations of virginity has occurred over the course of the past several centuries, loss of virginity is still seen as A Major Life Event. But why? Why does an entire state of being hinge on the experience of a single action? And so begs the question: does Your First Time necessarily have to be a big deal?

When I was around eight years old, I watched the movie Hocus Pocus in my living room while my dad sat next to me on the couch reading a book. On the screen, I watched Dani roll her eyes and explain that a virgin had lit the black flame candle, and I asked my dad what that word meant.

“It means someone who hasn’t done something yet,” he told me, glancing up from his reading.

I pondered this. “So then isn’t everyone a virgin?” I asked him. “No one’s ever done everything.”

“That’s true,” he said. “They sure haven’t."

Only years later did I learn the true meaning, that virginity referred to one experience only: sex.

The first time I had sex, I cried afterwards. I’d done it with someone I loved, and who loved me, but I still cried because I felt like it should have been… more. In some unnameable way. The sex was predictably spastic and delightfully pleasurable, but after it was over, that was it. And I wondered something I’ve asked myself many times since: does the relentless buildup to the loss of virginity place this moment on an unearned pedestal?

Must loss of virginity automatically write that person into your life forever? Shouldn’t such a prominent position be dependent on more substantial factors? Like who you always had great conversations with, or who you once shared a gut-wrenching laugh with. Don’t we have control over the people we want to remember?

And then there are the logistical questions. When does virginity end? Is it only through penile-vaginal penetration? Does anal sex count? Does oral? Can virginity only be lost through consensual interaction?

But perhaps more importantly: why must virginity be a state of loss?

Intimacy, passion, closeness, experience—

It seems to me that there is much more to be gained.

- Sara

9:00pm | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZryB6yeYiXxz

(Notes: 7)