Virginity And Virginity In Jessica Valenti's The Purity Myth

In the book The Purity Myth, there are many issues being discussed. Jessica Valenti, explores the issues of virginity as an obsession, furthermore she expresses that such obsession can be harmful to young women. Valenti studies the different opinions of how virgins and whores are seen in the United States. Further, examining the breakdown of purity, who can be pure, and why this matters to society. To begin, Valenti recounts her own personal experiences with lack of purity and sexuality. Firstly, Valenti speaks of the day she lost her virginity and her first sexual experience. This was said to be an important moment in her life, but was relativity not essential. While Valenti stated this event did not make her a woman, but it did however make …show more content…
To better understand this concept, Valenti uses celebrities as an example of how society sees a person. If a celebrity chooses the purity path, they then become a role model for young women to look up to and strive to become when they are older. The role model figure is only for abstinence; this has nothing to do with what kind of person they actually are or their intelligence level. Valenti explains, of those girls who choose to be sexually active, like herself, become “at risk statistics” and then their character disappears. Society views those who choose to have sex as “bad” girls, and their own classmates call them sluts. Thus, these girls become known as being used up and are left out to dry by the abstinence-only education programs. In the United States the value of a women is only based on their sexual behavior and not them as a person explains Valenti. This is the purity myth as described by Valenti, the made up story that women are based on their sexuality and not their true character. During the book, Valenti fights for the character of a women to judged rather than their sexuality and …show more content…
The conservatives believe in pro-life and abortion would be illegal if they had it their way. While it may not be illegal there are strict laws in place to make it difficult for one to receive an abortion. Valteni, uses the example of a woman in South Dakota who wants to get an abortion, but it is subject to so many hurdles geographic, financial, and legal. These hurdles make it very difficult to get an abortion. Later, Valteni quotes Sarah Stoesz, president of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and states that in her region, the obstacles make some women so desperate that they take matters into their own hands (Valenti, 2009). With such harsh restrictions on abortion, this brings new problems for women, which is finding another way for an abortion. Women should have the ability to choose what they want to happen with their body, which obviously means pro-choice. However, Valenti discusses rape and abortion. If one women who was raped and wanted to have an abortion should be able to without having to explain themselves to men. A young women or even an older woman is raped, before this they were pure and innocent, and now they are scared for life. How is anyone to say what women should do with their body, especially in the instance of