Cultivating Girls with Precarious Ideas about Sex One Purity Ball at a Time

Every year, the Purity Ball makes the news and I lose my mind a little bit. The Ball is a formal, primarily Evangelical event attended by girls as young as four and their fathers. The girls pledge to remain pure and virginal until marriage; the fathers pledge to protect their daughters' virginity.

Let's begin with a creepy excerpt from Nancy Gibbs' July 17th article (The Pursuit of Teen Girl Purity) in TIME magazine:

Kylie Miraldi has come from California to celebrate her 18th birthday tonight. She'll be going to San Jose State on a volleyball scholarship next year. Her father, who looks a little like Superman, is on the dance floor with one of her sisters; he turns out to be Dean Miraldi, a former offensive lineman with the Philadelphia Eagles. When Kylie was 13, her parents took her on a hike in Lake Tahoe, Calif. "We discussed what it means to be a teenager in today's world," she says. They gave her a charm for her bracelet--a lock in the shape of a heart. Her father has the key. "On my wedding day, he'll give it to my husband," she explains. "It's a symbol of my father giving up the covering of my heart, protecting me, since it means my husband is now the protector. He becomes like the shield to my heart, to love me as I'm supposed to be loved."

Kylie talks with an unblinking confidence about a promise that she says is spiritual, mental and physical. "It's something I'm very proud of. I plan to keep pure until marriage. It's a promise I made to myself--not pressure from my parents," she says. She speaks plainly about what she wants in her life, what she thinks she has the power to control and what she doesn't. "I'm very much at peace about this," she says, and looks out across the twirling room. "I don't feel like I need to seek a man. I will be found."

These messages provided by these events and the parents who encourage their daughters participation are incredibly complicated. The messages insinuate that girls' worth is dependent only on their sexual activity or inactivity. And aren't these parents getting a little too involved in what's going on between their daughters' legs?

Perhaps providing a thorough sex education (including issues about emotions and self-esteem, peer pressure and hormones, STIs and contraception, pregnancy and responsibility), empowering girls to make their own decisions and being prepared to love and respect them after they've made their own decision, good or "bad," is the way to cultivate a sense of worth and strength in these maturing girls. In a time where abstinence-only sex education is a widespread and Congress-endorsed, albeit irresponsible, means of "teaching" students throughout the country, it is imperative for kids to be given as much information as possible and to be allowed to make decisions without fearing repercussions and crushing guilt.

From Feministing:

Flowery language and valorizing these days doesn't change what purity balls are about: the ownership and fetishizing of young girls' sexuality. Perhaps someone should remind Time of that fact.

via Feministing