The Purity Myth

by Jessica Valenti

  And, sadly, it’s not just girls who are bearing the brunt of what author M. Gigi Durham calls the “Lolita effect.”4 Grown women, buying into the notion that the only desirable sexuality is a young one, are embracing girlishness in more and more ways—even getting plastic surgery on their genitals just to be seen as sexually attractive and youthful.

  But whether it’s training girls to be women before their time or expecting women to act and look like little girls, when youth is the most desirable sexual characteristic and girls are the most desirable sexual beings, all of us suffer.

  PURE GIRLS

  There’s no doubt that the sexualization of girls has hit a crisis point. You need look no further than something as simple as Halloween—long gone are the days of girls dressing up as ghosts, witches, or a beloved superhero. Now the standard costume is “sexy ghost” or “Playboy witch.”r (There are even child “pimp” and “ho” costumes.) But we don’t sexify girls just one day a year; you can buy your daughter a Playboy pencil set or your infant Heelicious shoes—baby stilettos—anytime!

  “There has been a marked shift in the proliferation of hypersexualized imagery being marketed to younger and younger girls, as well as more representations of very young girls—I’m talking about tweens and preschoolers—in sexually provocative poses and contexts,” says Durham, author of The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It.5 “These are highly repressive and regressive notions of sexuality, not healthy, accurate, or developmentally appropriate concepts of sex.”

  A 2007 report from the American Psychological Association (APA) found that nearly every form of media studied provided “ample evidence of the sexualization of women,” and that most sexualization focused on young women.6s The report also showed that this sexualization did not come from media alone. Girls’ relationships with parents, educators, and peers further contributed to the problem.

  [P]arents may convey the message that maintaining an attractive physical appearance is the most important goal for girls. Some may allow or encourage plastic surgery to help girls meet that goal. Research shows that teachers sometimes encourage girls to play at being sexualized adult women or hold beliefs that girls of color are “hypersexual” and thus unlikely to achieve academic success. Both male and female peers have been found to contribute to the sexualization of girls—girls by policing each other to ensure conformance with standards of thinness and sexiness and boys by sexually objectifying and harassing girls.7

  Girls are getting it from all angles—home, school, and the media. What makes matters worse, according to Durham, is that the girls being targeted are even younger than they were in years past. The reason behind it? “It may be a backlash against the fact that women are succeeding in life in ways they never did before, and little girls represent a traditional version of docile, passive femininity,” says Durham.t

  Touting girls and girlhood as ideal forms of sexuality is simply another way of advancing the notion that to be desirable, women need to be un-adults—young, naive, and impressionable. Being independent, assured, and grown up has no place in this disconcerting model.

  The virginity movement is fighting sexualization with more sexualization—we just don’t always recognize it as such because it’s shrouded in language about modesty, purity, and protection.

  Take the latest trend in virginity worship: purity balls. Fathers escort their daughters to these promlike balls, where at some point—between the dancing, food, and entertainment (largely involving little girls doing ballet around big wooden crosses)—the girls recite a pledge vowing to be chaste until marriage, and name their fathers as the “keepers” of their virginity until a husband takes their place. Sounds a bit old school, but these events are becoming a nationwide phenomenon and receiving widespread media attention—from The New York Times to Dr. Phil—and parties are being planned in nearly every state in America.

  Pastor Randy Wilson and his wife, Lisa, founded purity balls in 1998 in Colorado Springs.8 The Wilsons, who have seven children (five of them daughters), write in a letter to purity ball planners that they founded the balls because they saw that “the protection of the daughter’s purity rested on the shoulders of the fathers” and they wanted to create an event that conveyed that sentiment.

  This “protection” is articulated in a pledge that fathers recite, promising to “cover” their daughters and protect their purity:I, [daughter’s name]’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband, and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide, and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influenc e generations to come.9u

  It’s hard to know what’s more problematic: the pseudo-incestuous talk of covering or the antiquated notion that fathers own their daughters and their sexuality. Perhaps the upside of these balls, however, is how overtly they epitomize the ideals of the virginity movement. There’s no hiding behind the rhetoric of empowerment here—the message is clear and direct: It’s up to men to control young women’s sexuality. (In fact, that message is furthered in newer events sponsored for young men and their mothers: integrity balls.v Instead of pledging their virginities to their mothers, however, the young men and boys in this ball vow not to sully someone’s daughter or future wife. So, in either event, maintaining women’s purity—and men’s ownership—is the goal!)

  And though the idea behind the pledge and ball is to promote purity, the symbolism is far from chaste. In one online video of a purity ball, the girls recite the virginity pledge as they give little pink boxes (ahem) to their fathers.11 Some fathers participating in purity balls give their daughter a charm necklace with a lock and key. The daughter keeps the lock and her father holds on to the key until she gets married and he gives the “key” to her husband.12w

  Also troubling is that the event is described as a “date.” The girls—some as young as six or seven—dress in ball gowns and often get their hair and makeup professionally done. In a Glamour magazine article about purity balls, reporter and noted feminist Jennifer Baumgardner wrote that many of the older girls in attendance look “disconcertingly like wives” next to their fathers.13 In a way, that’s the point: Young women are being trained to be not autonomous adults, but perpetual children whose sexuality is strictly defined and owned, like that of traditional wives-in-training.x

  The conservative Christian organization Focus on the Family, for example, encourages fathers to take their daughters on “date nights” in order to “affirm [their] femininity.”y The promotional materials that describe these dates use language that one would think would make participants uneasy, but instead are positioned as sweet and doting:Katie giggles as she waits for her date to come around and open the car door. The pair enters an ice cream shop. She sits down at the table as her date gently pushes in her chair. He takes her hand from across the table and asks, “What flavor would you like tonight, Sugar?” Katie smiles and says, “I’ll have chocolate, Daddy.” More and more fathers are becoming aware of their influence and are regularly dating their daughters.”14

  Dating their daughters? Isn’t it possible to encourage fathers to spend more time with their daughters without using language usually reserved for romantic relationships? Neutral, family-based rhetoric would probably be just as effective and would certainly be less, well, creepy. But calling daddy/ daughter quality time “dates” speaks volumes about how young women are valued in the virginity movement—for their sexuality.

  While I was researching purity balls, this quote from Wesley Tullis, who has taken both of his daughters to the events, really stuck with me: “It is impossible to convey what I have seen in their sweet spirits, their delicate, forming souls, as their daddy takes them out for their first, big dance. Their whole being absorbs my loving attention, resulting in a radiant sense of self-worth and identity .”15 There’s no doubt that a l
oving relationship between father and daughter can be a wonderful thing. But just how healthy is it to conflate virginity with “self-worth” and “identity,” and paternal attention with sexuality?

  In fact, it’s difficult to watch videos of purity balls, or read the “dating your daughter” literature, and not think about these pseudo-incestuous themes—and whether they might be connected to real-life abuse.

  In a piece in The New York Times on purity balls, Judith Warner notes that even if there is no crime in these events, “there is nonetheless a kind of horror to [fathers’] obsession with their daughters’ sexuality”:Judith Lewis Herman, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, whose work with and writings on incest victims in the 1980s revolutionized the understanding of the crime and its perpetrators, believes that incest, like rape generally, has to be viewed within a wider context of power relations. Incest, she says, is “an abuse of patriarchal power,” a criminal perversion of fatherly control and influence. It is perpetrated, in many cases, by men who present themselves as the guardians of the moral order.16

  The Wilsons, however, insist that purity balls and virginity pledges aren’t about focusing on girls’ sexuality. “Of course, we want to do everything we can to help them enter marriage as pure, as whole persons,” Lisa said in a 2001 Gazette article. “But it’s not just physical. It’s moral and emotional purity.”17

  Yet again, the foundation of a girl’s “moral and emotional purity” and her ability to be a “whole” person is boiled down to her being a virgin! While proponents of date nights and purity balls argue that they’re aiming to protect girls from sexualization, by focusing on girls’ virginity they’re actually positioning girls as sexual objects before they’ve even hit puberty.z

  What’s particularly ironic is that while the virginity movement denounces the sexualization of girls in mainstream culture, it fails to see how its own form of virginity worship is much the same thing.

  When the outrage over the padded bras at Target hit the media, for example, a spokesperson from Bratz, the doll company that produces the bras, argued that the padding was for girls “to be discreet as they develop . . . it’s more about hiding what you have got than showing it off. . . . [The bralettes] give girls modesty and style as they go through development changes.” (When U.K. superstore Tesco was criticized for selling a different brand of padded bras for young girls, a spokesperson for the company said nearly the same thing: “It is a product designed for girls at that self-conscious age when they are just developing.”18)

  The message seems contradictory—padded bras as a way to promote “modesty”? But, as with purity balls and our purity princesses put on pedestals for their abstinence, fetishizing virginity (and young girls) is explained away as simply exalting modesty and virtue.

  A similar theme woven through both purity culture and pop culture is the valorizing of “innocence” in girls—simply a sly way of focusing on virginity yet again. This idea has been popping up in specific controversies, and it reeks of feigned concern.

  When the FDA was considering making a cervical cancer vaccine available in the United States, for example, the single biggest public concern—even after it was deemed safe and legalized—wasn’t health related or about the vaccine’s newness. It was about “innocence”—specifically, the worry that girls would become promiscuous if they were vaccinated.

  The cancer vaccine, now sold as Gardasil, prevents human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection that causes cervical cancer. Opponents of the vaccine—the usual suspects, such as conservative religious groups and antifeminist organizations—argued that girls would be more likely to have sex if they thought they were “safe.”aa

  Charlotte Allen, of the antifeminist organization the Independent Women’s Forum, wrote that the HPV vaccine gives girls the message that “it’s just fine for them to have all the sex they want, ‘cuz now they’ll be vaccinated!” 19 Bridget Maher, of the Family Research Council, said that giving girls the vaccine is harmful because “they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.”20 Dozens of other conservative pundits and organizations repeated the sentiment. I rarely quote Bill Maher, but he was right on when he noted, “It’s like saying if you give a kid a tetanus shot, she’ll want to jab rusty nails in her feet.”21

  Then came the incessant chatter about innocence. In an interview with The Washington Post, one Pennsylvania pediatrician called the vaccine an “assault on [girls’] innocence.”22 In a post on Wendy Shalit’s blog, Modestly Yours, Elizabeth Neville wrote about the vaccine in a post titled “Immunized Against Innocence?”; another organization opposing the vaccine took the subtle route, naming itself Parents Promoting Innocence.23 Per usual, the virginity movement sought to protect an amorphous idea like “innocence” or “virginity,” rather than taking strong, tangible action on behalf of girls’ well-being. Where was the outrage over actual health concerns—you know, like cancer?

  The innocence trope isn’t limited to specific controversies, either. It seems the mere act of girls becoming women has the American public in a tizzy.

  In a 2008 MSNBC medical article, for example, doctor/reporter Billy Goldberg bemoaned how girls are beginning to menstruate at younger and younger ages. “What happened to the innocence of youth?” he asked. He also wrote, “Earlier onset of puberty is associated with health concerns beyond the loss of youthful innocence.”24

  If being premenstrual is “innocence,” does that make those of us with periods guilty? And this really gets to the heart of the matter: These concerns aren’t about lost innocence; they’re about lost girlhood. The virginity movement doesn’t want women to be adults.

  Despite the movement’s protestations about how this focus on innocence or preserving virginity is just a way of protecting girls, the truth is, it isn’t a way to desexualize them. It simply positions their sexuality as “good”—worth talking about, protecting, and valuing—and women’s sexuality, adult sexuality, as bad and wrong. The (perhaps) unintended consequence of this focus is that girls’ sexuality is sexualized and fetishized even further.

  With every virginity pledge taken and every girl sexualized in the media, what the virginity movement—and perhaps even American culture at large—wants for young women becomes clearer and clearer: perpetual girlhood.

  GIRLIFYING WOMEN

  Back in my teenage days in New York City, everyone wanted to go to raves, techno music-fueled dance parties where drugs were abundant.ab Putting aside the dangers of teenage drinking and drug use for a moment, the girls’ fashion of that time is worth some examination. I recall wearing baby barrettes in my hair (hey, it was the style!) and my friends carrying pacifiers around their necks. Unlike riot grrrls (the early-’90s punk feminists inspired by bands like Bikini Kill—who sometimes mimicked girlhood by wearing Hello Kitty or otherwise “young” clothing as a subversive statement about femininity), the rave fashion scene seemed much more about playing up little girls’ sexuality. Mercifully, the trend waned, but similar fashions have popped up in its place: Schoolgirl-style knee socks paired with heels are popular right now in hipster sects, for example. But fashion is just one cultural indicator of the girlhood fetish—and probably the most innocuous. Over the last two decades, the valorizing of youth and youth culture has hit women particularly hard. Women want to be young—often at too high a cost.

  Take vaginal rejuvenation,ac the fastest-growing form of plastic surgery in the United States,25 and probably the best example of how women are expected to be girls—and not just girls, but virginal girls. (After all, how much more obvious can the virginity fetish be when women are obtaining a surgery that makes their vaginas younger?)

  The surgery, touted using feminist rhetoric—“Women now have equal sexuality rights!” says one press release—claims to give women’s vaginas a “youthful aesthetic look.”26 Virgin vaginas, ready to order!

  Rejuvenation, which costs anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000, can include a labia trim, lip
osuction on the outer lips, tightening the vaginal muscles, or a hymenoplasty (in which the doctor constructs a fake hymen). And although the risks are serious—infection, hemorrhaging, loss of sensitivity, scarring, nerve damage, painful intercourse, and disfigurement—women are lining up to get the surgery.

  Why? Well, in addition to the “youthful aesthetic,” many women seem to believe that their genitals simply aren’t normal. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says that most women don’t understand the size and shape of genitalia correctly, and that physicians performing vaginal surgeries may be leading women to have “misguided assumptions” about what is normal.27 The ACOG even went as far as to release a warning about the surgery, noting that it is “deceptive” for doctors to give patients the impression that these procedures are “accepted and routine surgical practices.”28

  But “normalcy” in this regard is hard to define, given our porned culture. The Vaginal Rejuvenation Institute, for example, says on its website that “many women bring us magazines such as Playboy” to show the doctor the aesthetic they’re looking for. “Normalcy” is no longer defined by women—it’s defined by porn magazines and movies that feature young girls and uniform-looking vulvae.

  Psychologist and sex therapist Laurie Betito, speaking in Montreal in 2005 at the 17th World Congress of Sexology, said that “the pathologizing of changes associated with age creates a surgical esthetic,” even when it comes to our vaginas. Women in America already pathologize aging, so it’s no surprise that they’d be so keen to fall in line to alter the next body part we’re meant to obsess over.