Socially the idea of virginity has become more sexually than the act of deflowering the virgin. Virginity in women is thought to be the equivalent of a blank slate in which a man can object his fantasies on. Once a women has lost her virginity she is taken off the pedestal and thought to have been bad. In contrast when men lose their virginity they are thought of as more masculine or have been made a man. However, hormonally women who loose their hymen are at no less of sexual appeal hormonally to men than one who still has theirs in tact. This information can be inferred based off of research conducted on elephants.

Virginity is associated with purity and lack of experience. It is even a big topic idolized in the porn industry with a specific look to go with the idea of virginity. The porn industry has even gone far enough to ensure standards on pubic hair, hair-do, breast size, and even skin texture (no stretch marks allowed!). Pictures in the porn industry are often falsified using the urethra to imitate a ‘tiny virgin vagina’.

Society throughout the years has put emphasis on the importance of virginity. Media has even followed this trend to portray it. In the movie Taken the daughter of the former FBI agent stays alive because she is a virgin to be bid on by the rich men interested in her. However, her friend was not a virgin and wound up dead. Sending the subliminal message that if you ever go to Europe and end up in human trafficking you better hope you’re a virgin (and that you’re dad’s formally an FBI agent of some sort) or you’ll end up dead. Unfortunately, the idea of a virgin being for sale is not a new idea of our century, sales of virgins goes back to be documented first in the eighteenth century.

Society has also accepted insults for women that’s underlying meaning is a woman who has a lot of sex. Sex is meant to be a beautiful thing that creates life or at minimum pleasure, yet if a woman decides to engage in these activities they are considered bad. In today’s world women who value their virginity at a great cost are thought of as respectful young ladies with high values. Those who have one or more partners and lose their virginity at a younger age are thought to have little to no respect for themselves, nor do many of those who know of the woman’s sexual encounters. When a women is know to no longer be a virgin, it is thought by men that they are loose. For example, in high school movies the girl who is know to have had sex is usually the one throwing her self at men sexually or being targeted by men for one thing and one thing only. These messages translate to societies values. I recall high school learning about the loss of a girls virginity to her boyfriend through a grapevine. Eventually, the girl, let’s call her Alyssa, endured name calling and writings on the bathroom stalls in boys and girls bathrooms calling her names such as ‘whore’. She was one of the first girls to be publically know to be deflowered in high school and this made a huge impact on her life. After Alyssa broke up with her boyfriend Alyssa became the interest of many of the boys in school because they thought she was the one who could help them cross the bridge between virgin boy and man. Thankfully, Alyssa was smart enough to know that this was not the case for her and refused to be treated in such a way and actually helped the rest of the girls in high school’s reputations when they were no longer considered ‘pure’. However, Alyssa never dated anyone in our high school after that because she was looked at in a certain manner. Many girls who were virgins were still looked at as datable material because they weren’ t tainted or marked by someone else’s territory.

Society as a whole has used sexual behavior to define whether or not a woman is considered good or bad. However, should lack of experience really be considered a something sexy? And if this is the case why are men considered to be boyish and unattractive until they are deflowered and made a man. With the loss of a woman’s virginity they also loss their youth and innocence.