Not a Ripped Piece of Paper
The purity culture metaphor I’m still unlearning.
“This is what happens when you have sex before marriage.”
I’m in my eighth grade health class at an international Christian school. My teacher is holding up a piece of paper. She rips it down the middle, then tapes the two pieces back together.
“You’ve given a part of yourself away that you shouldn’t have. Even if you try to put yourself back together, you won’t be the same.”
Little thirteen-year-old me nodded and accepted what she told me as fact. It was as if she said the sky was blue.
Sex before marriage was bad, no questions asked.
On the popular TV show, Jane the Virgin, the titular protagonist Jane receives a similar message from her grandmother. Except this time, her virginity is a flower that’s crumpled on the floor if she has sex before marriage.
I had never seen my struggle with my faith captured so beautifully on TV before. Jane wants to please the people in her life by keeping sex for marriage, but she is discovering her sexuality in the process too. She’s a human being with desires like everyone else, and struggles to keep those desires in check to remain a virgin until marriage.
