{"id":61,"date":"2010-12-10T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/?p=61"},"modified":"2015-03-12T11:19:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T18:19:40","slug":"to-do-it-or-not-to-do-it-virginity-in-modern-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/2010\/12\/10\/to-do-it-or-not-to-do-it-virginity-in-modern-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"To Do it or Not to Do it: Virginity in Modern Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Although we may have much more liberal ideas about human sexuality today, young women are still chained to the term \u201cvirgin\u201d in a multitude of ways. Some girls are still taught that their virginity is something to be cherished and to be given away at the right time. But in many narratives for young men, such as the films Sex Drive<\/em>, Superbad <\/em>and American Pie<\/em>, losing virginity is a quest aided by good buddies, during which all sorts of crazy high jinks occur. This quest usually results in a victory and bonding experience. Losing virginity makes a guy cool, while for a girl it is anything but that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn films, losing virginity is portrayed as something that tears female relationships apart, while it brings male friends closer together,\u201d writes Piper Weiss, a staff editor for Yahoo! Shine. Where is the logic in that? In films, it is rarely a positive experience for female characters, and, if there is happy ending, if any, it \u201cusually sews up the mess the girl created by having sex in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a double standard in the concept of virginity: that a girl must lose hers the \u201cright\u201d way, while there is not nearly the same pressure on a boy. And why do we use the term to \u201close virginity?\u201d Why is it something to be lost? It is because we are still tied to antiquated notions ofvirginity, notions tying a girl\u2019s sexual history to her value.<\/p>\n

\u201cVirginity has historically been used to aid in the commodification of women: a woman as a \u2018pure\u2019 vessel is a valuable, marriageable commodity, while the one who has been tarnished is no longer worthwhile\u201d writes Lux Alptraum, a writer and sex educator currently the editor for Fleshbot. Because strains of this idea are still pervasive in society today, women are further objectified, making them seem like a kind of product. And when someone is reduced to that status, they are less likely to be afforded respect.<\/p>\n

In the film Easy A<\/em>, an update of American classic The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne, the protagonist Olive creates an elaborate lie about losing her virginity to satisfy her overbearing best friend. Later, Olive fakes having sex with her gay friend in order to protect him from bullying. The outcome of this particular incident is that Olive is shunned as a slut, while the friend\u2019s status as a man is affirmed positively.<\/p>\n

By the end of the film, Olive comes clean about her lies, realizes how ridiculous the concept of a slut in high school is, stays a virgin, and gets the guy. But the ultimate message of the movie is troubling because, as Dodai Stewart, senior editor of Jezebel.com, writes, \u201cIt seems that for girls today, even on film, you can talk about sex, pretend to have sex and joke about sex\u2013but if you want a happy ending, you can\u2019t actually have sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

The virgin\/whore complex is not always so black and white. While in high school a girl may risk her reputation by having sex, by the time college rolls around girls are expected to be sexually experienced, or at the very least, not virgins. These conflicting expectations can negatively affect body image. Many girls report feeling that they would be singled out for being sexually experienced in high school, yet they feel inadequate in college for lack thereof.<\/p>\n

Most young women have been offered the tired clich\u00e9: \u201cWhy buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?\u201d The idea is hammered into their heads that a girl is less desirable, or is not worthy of being wanted, if she is not pure. Young women are rarely offered \u201csex-positive\u201d messages: like that the right guy is not someone who will want you because you\u2019re pure, but someone that will love you, not despite, but for all of your experiences, good or bad. Ideas like this improve self image because they focus on loving yourself and not conforming to a narrow standard that society demands. The media also perpetuate the idea that teenagers who have sex are damaging themselves and engaging in risky behavior, yet a study at UC Davis and University of Minnesota shows that \u201cteenagers within a committed relationship are no more likely to ruin their transcripts than those who abstain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopefully, someday \u201crather than asking teenagers\u2014or even ourselves\u2014to uphold some arbitrary standard of \u2018purity\u2019 (or, on the opposite end, \u2018virility\u2019), perhaps we should be teaching them to be true to themselves, their morals, and their desires,\u201d writes Lux Alptraum. Sarah Morton, an abortion activist, encourages that \u201crather than focusing on being \u2018sex-positive\u2019 perhaps we should work on simply being positive, a body-friendly mindset that leads us to valuing our sexuality as a part of ourselves.\u201d This approach ignores societal expectations, creating positive body image by appreciating a diverse set of experiences and not creating standards against which to measure oneself. The focus should be on the individual, and it should not matter whether or not someone has had sex, or how or when they have sex; because at the end of the day, it\u2019s nobody\u2019s business but one\u2019s own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mixed messages girls receive from the media about virginity are damaging to their body image. Using the recent film Easy A as an example, Emily Morris suggests that young women should focus on being positive and not hold themselves to the standards being perpetuated in the media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,231],"tags":[62,63,15],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feature","category-vol-3-issue-1","tag-emily-morris","tag-film-industry","tag-sex"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.scrippscollege.edu\/invisible\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}