Making Virginity Fun Again
Amanda Thomas, SY ’21, and Max Himpe, BF ’21, question society’s obsession with virginity in the newest edition of their biweekly column, Tea Time with Max and Amanda.
Amanda Thomas : According to Teen Vogue, men on average lose their virginity at the age of 16.9, while women lose their virginity at 17.2. (Teen Vogue knows the teens; we have to trust them!) What does that even mean? Growing up, I would’ve read that article and thought, “At 16.9 years old, I have to break my hymen guys!” I was obsessed with my hymen for a while. When I learned that hymens could break from something as arbitrary as exercise, I considered telling everyone after a workout that I had just lost my virginity. Now that she’s gone, I want to hold old-me and tell her: Your hymen is probably the same. And I want to tell my virginity: Hey, I’m sorry I was so unhappy to have you. I actually miss you, you were beautiful.
On a semi-related note, I just started watching Girls (I’m late I know), and so far (season 2) Shoshana is my favorite character. She’s an NYU student who is naive, talkative, and initially a college virgin. Shoshana’s friends are all having sex with people like Adam Driver (so fucking lucky) and she’s self-conscious. I love watching virgins on television because they show that there’s no “look.” I’ve always felt that having your virginity can make you feel ugly or like a prude, but there’s so much more to it. There are hot virgins, ugly virgins, God-fearing virgins, secular virgins, horny virgins, asexual virgins, virgins that are nervous about their virginity, virgins who think they’re too good for sex. What I’m saying is that there’s no right way to be a virgin. Your hymen doesn’t have to look a certain way, you don’t have to act a certain way. It’s all a convoluted mess. Max, please talk about the hymen obsession if you have time.
Max Himpe: There is no right way to being a virgin. And there’s no right way to losing your virginity, either.
I, for instance, lost my virginity when I was 10-years-old. It was an innocuous but restless school night. I was writhing in my bed, waiting to find a comfortable sleeping position. As my body re-adjusted against my sheets for the dozenth time, suddenly — oh, something felt good. A ripple of heady goosebumps passed through me. Do that again, I thought. As the writhing continued, with deliberate pace, I acquired a rhythm. The heady goosebumps came now in waves and the tide was coming in. My nerves undulated as if stroked by a tender massage chair until — oh, wow! I was now fully under the wave. My whole body was numb, like a tongue after good spice. I collapsed into my mattress, wide-eyed, and asked myself: What new superpower had my body just unlocked?
This is how I lost my virginity. Hot, right — I lost my virginity so young. The moment was not so much a cherry-pop as a watermelon-blast because I had just accessed a new realm, the realm of sexual pleasure.
Penetrative sex, the boring definition of virginity, was simply another space to discover in this realm. There were other discoveries to come, about bodies, intimacy, giving pleasure, and more. But this moment was the zenith of my sexual enlightenment. My virginity loss was driven by curiosity and adventure. There were no rules, and no one was telling me how to do it.
Discovering the sexual realm was probably some of the best sex I ever had. So if we’re going to obsess over “virginity,” let’s reclaim the moment. Let it be special not because someone told you it was, but because you knew that it was. Mark it on your calendar and have a little anniversary party — attended by just you *wink wink*.
AT: Max didn’t talk about hymens, which sucks, but I mean to each his own. We’re moving on… The point is virginity is fluid. You can lose your virginity multiple times! Sometimes I fantasize about all the ways I will lose my virginity again. My first time having sex on the beach, my first time having sex with my future long-term partner, my first time having sex in a villa at an all-exclusive resort in Jamaica… What I’m saying is that YOU decide when your virginity is taken. I pose you this: if a person has oral sex at 15 and then has penetrative sex at 25, when did that person lose their virginity? Both are technically sex! They both count!
Also losing your virginity is special every time, so why does the first time you have sex have to be perfect? The first job you get in your life is usually your shittiest — you gain experience, you grow, and you work your way to your perfect job. Sex happens over and over and over again. The fun part about losing it is thinking about all the ways to keep having it! So I guess I’m going to just… have more sex?
Max: Hell yes! I’m actually super excited to lose my virginity at a mattress factory. Oh, and I’d definitely count myself as a rooftop virgin. So there’s that to look forward to.
Eggheads (another virginity I have yet to lose) might describe this conversation we’re having as the queering of virginity or, in Teatime terms, making virginity fun again. But, not to speak for Amanda here, I do think this exercise in re-virginification™ has a serious purpose.
It is diabolical that people are afraid to admit to their “virginity” (in the normative sense) for fear of being considered unattractive to sexual partners. As a result, they will spend their first penetrative experiences pretending to know what the hell is going on. Which will make the experience worse. And maybe these “virgins” think that they’ll get the gist from the porn they’ve watch. But learning about sex from porn is about as useful as learning about politics from Cory in the House.
If we redefined and undermined this “virginity” binary, we’d be free to tell our sexual partners what we know and what we don’t. And no sexual act would be more valid than the other. Goddamnit, honesty is sexy.
And on that note, Amanda, I should be honest with you: I really don’t get hymens. For a long time, I thought it was a type of medication. Or a disease. One of those two.
