Like a Virgin

So this weeks episode of Glee has me thinking about Virgins.  To recap, the episode was about female/personal empowerment and strength.  As part of this process, a few of the characters were forced to make a decision about their bodies and virginity.  Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the episode here, but it did cause me to think about this ‘virginity’ thing.

I believe that virginity gets a bad rap in our society.  It is usually drawn synonymous to naïveté, or guilelessness.  This bothers me.  I believe that virginity can be a good thing.  Why has our society demonized sexual inexperience?  From what I remember, the best sexual episodes of my life happend right before and right after I love my virginity; everything was new and exciting.  There was nothing to compare to, nothing to live up to.  The only thing driving me was a visceral desire that I had never experienced before; it was electrifying, I loved it.  Now sex feels as though it is comfortable and usual.  Even while having sex with a new person, you begin to draw similarities between what you are experiencing and what you have experienced before.  There isn’t much that is unique any longer.  Before long, sex becomes as processed and canned as the McDonald’s that you had for lunch.  However, this is the sexual state that people pressure virgins into converting to.  We can see this in any of the hundreds of thousands of commercials on television today.  When we see a female symbol of sex or sexuality, it usually consists of a toned woman, dressed in either red or blak, wearing matching high heels, makeup, and enough hair product to kill an ant colony.  She is usually doing something completely inappropriate with a phallic object, simply to give the illusion that she is willing to ‘go all the way.’  What we should be seeing is a make-up-less woman in a white dress wearing flats while longingly looking into their lovers eyes before a long passionate first kiss.  Virginal people are pressured into thinking that the giddy, excited sexual experiences that they are going through are petty and only transitory.  These commercials are trying to convince people that what they want (or want to be) is a ‘naughty’ woman that has experience when they should be being told the opposite.  Those virginal sexual experiences are going to become some of the most satisfying experiences of their lives.  Why can’t we encourage people to stay that way?

I guess this rant carries over from sex into all walks of life.  I feel that during my entire life I have been pressured into shedding my ‘childish’ and virginal views for a more adult take on things.  Whether it be regarding money, school, social behavior, or hobbies, I was encouraged to focus my attention on the things that other ‘responsible adults’ we interested in and mimic them.  Some of the lessons are valuable, such as how to properly hold a fork, or watching ones mouth around company, but others are just plain ridiculous.  People shouldn’t stop building model cars, or dancing around their room in their underwear just because most adults wouldn’t approve.  If a grown adult wants to order a happy meal because the toy makes them happy, then they should do it without being ridiculed by the populous at large.

It’s not that I feel the fight is lost.  Yes, I still do dance around my room just for the hell of it, but there are some things that I feel that I was too quick to dispose of.  The main one is my general innocence.  Don’t get me wrong, I do not regret how (or to whom) I lost my virginity, but I do wish I would have stayed in that limbo of innocence a little longer.  I long for that giddy, nervous style of love making and courtship.  I want a first kiss on a date to cause the same unsettling excitement that it did when I was in high school.  The only hope that I have is that with the right person, it will.  If I connect with a matching personality, we will make each other feel like virgins, touched for the very first time…