Recently in Purity Category

Seems that some people are upset that one of the models on Teen Vogue's November cover is pregnant.

19 year-old Jourdan Dunn isn't visibly pregnant, but talks about her pregnancy in the magazine.

The cover has raised eyebrows among some parents, teens and advocates against teen pregnancy.

"There's no message to send to them that that's not OK. Maybe if she's on the cover to tell them 'Be careful,' that's one thing," said Catherine Essig, a 19-year-old sophomore at Dallas' Southern Methodist University, who was concerned about 15- and 16-year-old readers.

Many advocates said parents should use the cover as a way to talk to their kids about sex and the importance of planning pregnancies for the right moment in their lives.

"Teen parenting isn't glamorous, even if you are a teen model," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association.

First of all, I'm not sure why this magazine cover is scandalous and this one isn't. Teen pregnancy is talked about and featured everywhere - from glamorized pics of Bristol Palin to MTV''s 16 and Pregnant. And the fact is, the teen pregnancy is a reality - the teen pregnancy rate in the U.S. went up for the second year in a row for the first time in a decade (thanks, abstinence-only education!). Is it really better to hide the issue?

I understand concerns about making teen pregnancy seem "cool," but I don't think that shaming young women who are pregnant or ignoring their existence is an answer. As Teen Vogue Editor-in-Chief Amy Astley said, "Teen pregnancy is a difficult, real-life issue that Teen Vogue readers (with an average age of 18) are mature enough to be exposed to...[we] felt it was important to support, not punish, Jourdan." Agreed.

I don't know I shouldn't be surprised that there's a iPhone "purity ring" application - after all, I'm all too familiar with the various ways virginity fetish reveals itself. But this still managed to skeeve me.

For just 59p, consumers can download an application that allows them to take a purity pledge and then display a silver ring on their phone to prove their commitment to abstinence.

Because nothing "proves" chastity like an iPhone app. Henry Bennett, director of the company who created the app says, "If you've taken the pledge, you're likely to follow it through."

As we all know, however, the only thing virginity pledges are more likely to make teens follow through will is oral, anal, and unprotected sex. As someone replied to me about the app on Twitter, "Girls who download it are less likely to practice safe texting."

*Headline stolen shamelessly from Ann.

Hey all, I just got back from my pre-wedding honeymoon (fun!) last night and will back to blogging regularly this Wednesday. Until then, I thought I'd share this video of an interview I did with the wonderful Kendall McKenzie of Planned Parenthood about The Purity Myth. Hope you enjoy it.

Shoulder-baring brides with jaunty hats are clearly strumpets.

Calling young women who are getting married "MySpace generation brides," Newsweek complains that brides today are "like a virgin no more." (I'd be outraged, but this is just too fun for me to post about to be all that angry.)

Two decades ago, when young girls wondered how brides were supposed to look and behave, they'd most likely conclude--with some prompting from Cinderella--that on their big day they'd be a princess. They'd be blushing, virginal and wrapped from head to toe in tulle and lace.

So why is it that these days, some brides seem to be taking their cues more from Jessica Rabbit than Cinderella? More vamp than virgin, they're having bachelorette parties that are as raunchy as their fiancés' sendoffs. They're selecting cleavage- or lower-back-baring bridal gowns that might get a gasp from conservative relatives.

Are we seriously supposed to be scandalized by back-bearing dresses and cheesy bachelorette parties with penis straws? Come on now. But apparently this article is less about how immodest brides are, and more about moral panic over women in general.

This is, after all, is a generation that is comfortable with "sexting" and posting provocative pictures of themselves on Facebook and MySpace.

Wow, MySpace and sexting in one sentence - impressive! The article goes on to point out (smugly) that women are getting married later, having raunchier bachelorette parties, having their ceremonies in locations other than churches, and living with their significant others before getting married. And we're supposed to think, I guess, that these are all bad things.

What's really interesting to me is how the media is able to frame anything as women being slutty. Fun.

(Naturally, you can find out more what I think about sex and sexism in The Purity Myth.)

TaraK on the Community blog has more.

This is me trying to keep my cool. What do you think?

Another video version of Not Oprah.

Check out Jess' book, RH Reality Check, and Shelby Knox's work.

Transcript after the jump.

This is why I wrote this. *Shudder*

I can't believe I missed this episode (and that I have to wait weeks till the full episode is available online)! Outside of the mouse-on-teen violence, I really liked this clip - especially how it points out that by focusing on purity these companies/singers are actually focusing on sexuality, just in a "safe" way.

Thanks to Lucas for the heads up.

One of the upsides of reading IWF's blog (the downside being the constant retching) is that it points you in the direction of gems like this one. Robert P. George and John B. Londregan, professors in Princeton's Department of Politics, say that sex on college campuses is a "tragedy." They also really, really like scare quotes.

...Princeton, where we teach, is a wonderful university; but like other colleges and universities there is a dark side to its social life. Our students are bright, enthusiastic, and eager to learn. Most did not come to college bent on boozing and hooking up. Many feel deeply ambivalent about these aspects of campus life. Yet, they find little support on campus for the "alternative lifestyle" of living by traditional moral virtues.

...Whether it is a private institution such as Yale or a public one such as the University of Delaware, the truth is that things begin going badly for them right off the bat. Princeton is all-too-typical. As part of the freshman orientation program, students are required to attend an event entitled "Sex on a Saturday Night." It consists of a series of skits ostensibly designed to discourage "date rape." For years, critics have contended that the play, which features vulgarity and suggestive conduct, does nothing to serve this laudable goal; rather, it reinforces the campus culture of sexual permissiveness, primarily by shaping students' expectations to include sexual license as normal.

Let's not even get into the fact that date rape is in scare quotes - though I think that reveals volumes about where these two are coming from. What's interesting is that right off the bat, George and Londregan assume that young people don't like hooking up and sex - it's the dark side after all - and that all that's stopping them from living a life of morality is the lack of a college-funded chastity center. (They recommend calling them "Love and Fidelity Centers.")

Most universities have established non-academic centers of various kinds that provide educational, social, and counseling support. Princeton is again typical. We have the Women's Center, the International Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Center, and the Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding. Whether or not one agrees with the ideological bent of some of these centers, at least they represent the University's effort to meet what are perceived as the needs of certain segments of our student body.

Hmm, the last time I checked being a woman or being gay isn't ideological - it's who you are.

Conspicuously absent, however, are centers or programs offering meaningful support for students who desire to live chastely. "Sexual health" offices do not supply the need because staff members see their roles, not as promoting self-discipline and high moral standards, but as providing "non-judgmental" advice about how to have sex while avoiding pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and infections.

Perhaps - and this is just a guess - these folks providing scary non-judgmental advice simply don't think it's their place to preach "morals" (I think they're rubbing off on me with the scare quotes!) to adults capable of making their own sexual decisions. But George and Londregan are having none of it. They not only think that there needs to be virginity centers on campus - they believe they need to be led by university officials, not students who presumably can't be trusted not to fuck their way through school.

Students are strapped for time and don't have the experience or professional skills to provide the level of guidance and support that their peers need when it comes to important questions of sexuality and morality. Universities know this--that's why at Princeton, for example, in addition to the student gay Pride Alliance, the Queer Graduate Caucus, LGBT Task Force, and the LGBT Staff and Faculty Group, there is the University's LGBT Center, with a full-time paid University staff member committed to LGBT support and activities. For the same reasons, there needs to be university support for students who want to live and conduct their relationships honorably in the face of the hook-up culture.

What really gets me - outside of the frightening idea of dudes like George and Londregan heading up a center telling young women anything about sex - is that these professors that claim to have students' best interest at heart use incredibly shaming language throughout this article. After all, if students who don't have sex are acting "honorably," what does that make those who do have sex?

So just a quick message to George, Londregan and all the virginity movement shamers out there: There's nothing wrong with having sex. There's nothing immoral, abnormal, or dishonorable about it. (Also, mind your own business and stop thinking about your students' sex lives. It's creepy.)

The latest Rolling Stone cover seems like a ridiculously apt illustration of what I was reading in Jessica's new book, The Purity Myth, just last night:

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.

Jess' goes on to make the argument that it's not just pop culture outlets like Rolling Stone that are pushing this highly sexualized and infantile image, but the virginity movement as well:

...the 'perfect virgin' is at the center of the movement's rhetoric, and its goals revolve largely around convincing girls that the only way to be pure is to abstain from sex. This means there's an awful lot of talk about young girls' sexuality in the movement, from T-shirts to abstinence classes to purity balls. By focusing on the virginity of young women and girls, the movement is doing exactly what it purports to abhor--objectifying women and reducing them to their sexuality.

Oh, and the totally unsubtle ploy to titillate dudes with girl-on-girl fantasies is duly noted. Really original Rolling Stone.

Thanks to platoformboots for the heads up.

For more pics, check out Women's Glib.

America's Next Top Model doesn't have the best track record when it comes to sexism and photo shoots, so I guess this shouldn't shock me. The show had the models dress up like little girls as a way to promote...purity?

This issue is really important to me, the issue of teen girls and being what I call 'out of control.' I did a survey on my talk-show website, and I found that one in five girls that are teens that we surveyed actually want to be a teen mom. Purity and innocence is something that's being lost and as you Top Models are doing this photo shoot, you guys are role models, too. The assignment was for you all to embody different little games that little girls play on the playground.

I write about this a lot in The Purity Myth (cough, buy it, cough), but I'll say it again: fetishizing "purity" and "innocence" generally just means that you end up fetishizing little girls.

UPDATE: Community blogger LTB also wrote a kick-ass post about this (long before I did, it seems - my bad!).

I'm really excited to announce that The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women is out. (Though super nervous too!)

And while I'm anticipating some backlash - shit, even the title/cover of the book generated some conservative hand-wringing - I'm hoping that it will further the conversation about how the conservative movement uses young women's bodies and moral panic myths to push traditional gender roles and punish women who don't fit into the "pure" ideal.

If you want to get more of an idea of what the book is all about, you can download the Introduction here. Hope you enjoy it!

You can buy The Purity Myth on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's or Indiebound.

In a talk I gave a couple of weeks ago in Virginia, I mentioned how the covers of anti-"hook up culture" publications often depict women as disheveled and distraught. Since I didn't get to show folks what I meant then, I thought I could post a couple now for your viewing pleasure (or perhaps more accurately, viewing horror).

Here's a study funded by the Independent Women's Forum, Hooking Up, Hanging Out and Hoping for Mr. Right.

The cover of Laura Sessions Stepp's Unhooked is a bit more subtle, simply showing a faceless woman taking her shirt off.

But it's Miriam Grossman's Unprotected that really takes the shaming cake, with two different covers relaying the same sad message.

I wonder why Grossman decided to go with such a decidedly upbeat cover for her publication with the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute - Sense & Sexuality. (Since she's pretty grim in the book - telling readers that young women who have pre-marital sex are likely to end up depressed, diseased drop outs.) I'd like to think it's because the word 'rectum' looks so pretty in cursive.

If anyone has any more anti-hook up covers, link them in comments!

I was really glad to see that The New York Times picked up on the misplaced moral panic over teenage sex.

Parents have worried for generations about changing moral values and risky behavior among young people...

...The talk show host Tyra Banks declared a teen sex crisis last fall after her show surveyed girls about sexual behavior. A few years ago, Oprah Winfrey warned parents of a teenage oral-sex epidemic.

The news is troubling, but it's also misleading. While some young people are clearly engaging in risky sexual behavior, a vast majority are not. The reality is that in many ways, today's teenagers are more conservative about sex than previous generations.

But what reporter Tara Parker-Pope left out is that this isn't just about panic over teen sex - it's about about panic over girls having sex.

After all, it's not boys who are being called prostitots and "girls gone wild." It's not boys who are targeted by abstinence only education and purity balls. And it's definitely not boys who have been the subject of books like Prude, Unhooked and Girls Gone Mild. It's us.

But that aside, it was refreshing to see a story about how well young people are doing. And they are. Teenagers are using contraception more (if they haven't been privy to abstinence only education, of course, in which case they don't use contraception and have increased rates of oral and anal sex) and more effectively.

Now if we could just get the media (and conservatives, and anti-feminist authors) to stop obsessing over young women's sex lives...