To Be or Not To Be: It's A Question of Virginity

Recently the media has gone stir-crazy around the debate of virginity. Does the individual wait until marriage, or not? Personally I think it is completely up to the individual. However, there are stigmas attached to both remaining “pure” and becoming sexually active.

            I am sad to admit but I find enjoyment in watching the crazy antics on the TLC. Most recently TLC aired a new show entitled “The Virgin Diaries”, which documented 5 different individuals who are all virgins and 1 “reclaimed” virgin. One couple documented in the show were Shanna (27) and Ryan (31), who had neither been intimate nor kissed another individual before. The show documents their wedding, with the grand moment being the couple’s first kiss. When watching the kiss it looks like they are trying to eat each other’s face. Nom… nom… nom… face. Needless to say it is particularly awkward.

            While I feel the show does a good job at displaying their choice to remain “pure” in a positive light, that being a virgin isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is the an individual’s choice,  conservatives place such an emphasis around “remaining pure”. Even the choice of wording, “purity” comes with so many connotations. The opposite pure is impure, which seems a little harsh to me to call someone impure. To me that is like telling someone they are a fundamentally a bad person. That the one decision, in this case to participate in sexual acts, has fundamentally changed their life.

 I cannot speak for everyone, but losing my virginity was not all that grand. I always imagined that losing my virginity would be this momentous occasion, fireworks would go off and my whole world would be changed for better or worse. Personally I did not find that at all. The first time was kind of actually unenjoyable. Painful and awkward, and trust me when I say there are no fireworks when you lose your virginity, neither literal nor metaphoric fireworks. I’m making sex sound all bad which it really isn’t, it does get better, A LOT better. But the assumptions of the first time are so grand, and the connotations associated with being “pure” only increase this.

I do not believe that being sexually active, under one’s will makes someone impure. I truly hate the stigma around sex. As I have blogged before, the stigma’s around sex make it harder for people to make informed decisions about their sexuality. People need to be informed and that cannot happen when you stick the label of “impure” next to education.