By now, you’ve heard Wale’s song “BAD” and probably let your head sway along with that smooth chorus. But did you really catch the lyrics?

[Hook: Tiara Thomas]

Is it bad that I never made love, no I never did it.

But I sure know how to f#%k. 

Hmm is that bad?

If you caught last week’s episode of “The Game,” you saw the shock on Brandy and Boss Lady’s face when Keira (Lauren London’s character) revealed that she was a virgin. A 25-year-old virgin was laughable. But why? Why wasn’t that admirable? Why was she encouraged to gon’ and give it up?

Why is having sex by the time you’re a certain age, whether you’re married or not, expected? I’m a 25-year-old virgin. Am I missing something? Or am I waiting for true love? I know that may sound corny, but what if we have a shallow view of our body’s worth? What if having sex without love is not all it’s cracked up to be? From every angle I’ve seen, including a few scenes of “Love & Hip-Hop Atlanta,” all sex before marriage seems to do is just complicate things. Then again, I don’t even have to go that far, I see what it’s done to friends and family members. We’re not just sexual beings, we have emotions and souls too. So, don’t all those elements get intertwined when one has sex? For women, it definitely seems so. And if not, if you say you are able to have sex without feelings, doesn’t that mean you are dehumanizing yourself to merely an object to please others and be pleased? Are you really okay with that? I’m not. And I don’t think any of us should be. I think we should want more. We should want to experience the giving of our precious bodies to another under a lasting covenant. Sure, marriages are failing left and right, but does that mean that our bodies are now less valuable as well?

I could say at least wait to make love, but even that is selling yourself short if that “love” is before marriage. Imagine a world that waited ’til marriage and kept their vows. Think about the pain that wouldn’t exist in so many hearts. All of my friends who have been sexually active and now are waiting and praying for God to send them a husband they can worship with (yes, worship is what they call it) tell me that I should be glad I’ve waited. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have desires just like the next person, but I also have to have boundaries. They may sound like rules and regulations, but sometimes boundaries prevent us from forsaking great for good enough. I’m sorry, but Joan’s three-month rule (Girlfriends) and Steve Harvey’s employee probationary allegory that also applied a 90-day rule, shouldn’t be enough for us. We’re not talking about a job here, our beautifully and fearfully made bodies are on the line.

Considering that I’m a virgin, I’m sure some would argue I don’t know any better. But what about someone who does — from experience? It just so happens that my best friend—an up and coming songwriter whose written for and with some accomplished artists and songwriters —has another way of looking at love and sex. In her remix of “Bad” Natalie Lauren asks, is it bad that I want to find love?

Source: NY Mag

While I can certainly see the need for something like this in foreign countries where a woman’s virginity is sometimes a matter of live or death, literally, I can’t say I support the idea of too many American women searching the Internet for fake hymens. Well, actually, thanks to HymenShop.com, ladies actually don’t have to search much at all because they’ve got artificial hymen kits already prepared for you for the low price of $29.95.

“Restore your virginity in five minutes with this new technologically advanced product,” the site reads. “Kiss your deep dark secret goodbye and marry in confidence.”

Marry in confidence built on a lie? Silly opportunists.

Hymen Shop prides itself on being an (extremely) low cost alternative to surgical procedures like hymen repair and hymen reconstruction, which are much more invasive, all for the sake of getting that old thing back. That old thing being the virginity the man you’re with thinks you never lost. According to the site, when you place the packaged membrane inside of you, it expands and gets tight, giving the illusion of an area that’s never been explored by a man, and once a woman is penetrated, a blood-like substance will ooze from the area so the man knows it’s real — except it isn’t.

Writer Leah Beckmann didn’t just take the Hymen Shop’s infomercial-like word for it, she put the product to the test in a hilarious article aptly titled, “Sex With a Fake Hymen” for NY Magazine’s The Cut. She wrote:

“Using an index finger, insert the artificial hymen into the vagina.” Before I can decipher whether the hymen should go in blood-side up or blood-side down— rolled up like a joint? crumpled into a ball?— the film dissolves in my hands. I am covered in bright red dye. I am down one hymen. There is red on every surface of the sink. CSI: New York will need the whole hour to solve this one.

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Source: Bossip.com

A lot of my friends thought I was kidding — or crazy –when they heard that my fiancé and I were not having sex until we got married.

It was a decision we had made separately before we even started dating. The response I got from people who knew of our decision confirmed my suspicion that sex is no longer widely viewed as an option in dating relationships, but a requirement and is actually considered by most as a prerequisite to marriage. This is why celebrity couples like Meagan Good and Devon Franklin made headlines when they announced they were engaged and celibate. We already knew that Meagan had committed to abstain until marriage, but for some odd reason that commitment was expected to be disregarded when in a serious relationship. We believe that celibate women can’t possibly get engaged and when they are, it’s shocking.

In fact, for some odd reason, many believe that celibate women — especially the Christian ones — are sitting in convents, wrapped in nun outfits, proudly announcing they’re married to Jesus.

I first noticed this in my own life when people would ask me if my fiance and I kiss. They figured if we weren’t fornicating then we weren’t kissing either. Granted, there are some people who do wait until their wedding day to have their first kiss and five million people watch them eat each other’s faces. These couples fit squarely into the fallacious stereotype that people who wait until marriage to have sex are young, naive, and childlike.

We’re comfortable with those stereotypes because we’ve been brainwashed to believe that having indiscriminate sex is normal and adults who are celibate are not normal.

Personally, I was faced with my own erroneous beliefs when I learned that my then-boyfriend (now husband) was a virgin. Though I met him at church, I was still thoroughly shocked. I was celibate, but I didn’t think I knew any men who were real-life virgins. “But…you’re handsome, you have a great personality, you’re educated, you have a solid career, you have your own house, you’re over 30…” my list of reasons why he couldn’t possibly be a virgin went on and on. Unbeknownst to me, I had internalized the propaganda that no man hits 25 without dropping trou unless he looks and acts like Steve Carell in “40-Year-Old Virgin”.

Sadly, many people in the nation share this flawed thinking. We are taught that abstaining from sex means abstaining from living. Celibate people — especially virgins — are expected to be prude, unattractive, homely, recluses who are probably asexual. When celebrities like Tim Tebow and Lolo Jones come along with their “I’m a virgin” confession thus publicly catapulting all negative stereotypes into oblivion, the press doesn’t know how to react.

Do you remember when Tim Tebow was chosen by Jockey for an endorsement contract and he was dubbed “the unlikeliest underwear model ever”? Though, many athletes endorse undergarments, apparently, the fact that this athlete wasn’t tossing off his briefs in the presence of groupies made him an odd choice.

In a borderline bitter and excessively harsh piece on Lolo in the New York Times published recently, author Jere Longman said:

Jones has decided she will be whatever anyone wants her to be — vixen, virgin, victim — to draw attention to herself and the many products she endorses.

In 2009, Jones posed nude for ESPN the Magazine. This year, she appeared on the cover of Outside magazine seeming to wear a bathing suit made of nothing but strategically placed ribbon. At the same time, she has proclaimed herself to be a 30-year-old virgin and a Christian.

In that last line, you can practically see the sarcasm dripping off the page as though virginity means anything other than “never had sex”. As far as her Christianity, that’s for another article, but I will say that most of the beef with Lolo on the “virgin and Christian” front isn’t coming from Christians or virgins. The loudest criticism is from those who wish to portray Christians and virgins in a particular fashion and are outright pissed that Lolo Jones isn’t the embarrassing caricature often portrayed on television and instead is actually a normal athlete who happens to refrain from sex. Furthermore, just because she is a virgin doesn’t mean she isn’t a vixen. The term simply means “sexually attractive” and, like we try to explain to rapists, finding a woman Hot doesn’t mean she owes you sex.

It’s not just Lolo Jones either who is criticized for not fitting some arbitrary definition. When Meagan Good announced she was celibate, the tongue-wagging reached epic proportion. One publication asked:

“How exactly do you balance that with being a self-proclaimed party animal and being slizzed on the club scene in [skimpy] outfits all the time?”

Balance what? Not having sex with still having typical Hollywood rich-chicks fun? What activity automatically means sex…except sex? Partying doesn’t. Modeling for an underwear company doesn’t. Even posing nude in ESPN’s famous “Body Issue” doesn’t. Just because someone does these things yet refrains from sex doesn’t make him or her a fraud. It just make the naysayers look like imbeciles.

In my opinion, the instances when someone’s sex life or chastity makes news simply serves to expose the ridiculous and sad ideas that prevail in this nation. When Jada Pinkett and Will Smith talk about enjoying sex with each other, that makes headlines (and draws ire) because we believe that marriage is the end of sex. And when someone who isn’t married isn’t having sex, that makes news (and also draws criticism) because apparently we’re all animals running around foaming at the mouth for our next hump. It’s so backward and bizarre.

Celibacy is not a way of dress or a way of speaking or a description reserved for a man or woman that nobody wants to sleep with. Being celibate simply means abstaining from sex — and there’s absolutely nothing abnormal about that.

Do you think people have preconceived notions about what celibacy looks like?

Follow Alissa on Twitter @AlissaInPink

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Source: blogs.desmoinesregister.com

There’s lots of stigma surrounding virginity, tons of myths, and a lot of pressure that falls on those who make a conscious choice not to engage in sex until marriage. When you look at the virgin landscape, it’s not hard to see the dominant figures in the race against fleshly desires. Overwhelmingly, it’s women who proclaim decisions to remain virgins until they walk down the aisle which always makes me wonder, just who are they saving themselves for?

Interestingly, I stumbled across this article on PEOPLE about Olympian Lori “Lolo” Jones today which recounts an interview she had on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel that doesn’t talk about her triumphs as a track and field athlete, but about her defeats in the dating game because she’s a 29-year-old virgin. Lolo talks about being reduced to trying to find a man on Twitter, which has been more successful than online dating services, although not much more—which made me think, there has to be a dating website for virgins out there somewhere. But when Lolo was asked why she’s had such a hard time finding a partner she said it’s because she’s been so open about being a virgin and when she was asked why she’s putting herself through such turmoil, she replied that her virginity:

“It’s something, a gift I want to give my husband.”

That sentiment is hardly new, but as Lolo talked about how difficult remaining a virgin was, saying, “This journey has been hard. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Harder than training for the Olympics. Harder than studying for college has been staying a virgin before marriage,” something kept plaguing me. I was curious what motivates her to remain a virgin knowing that the man she settles down with likely will not be untouched like she is. That may sound cynical, but it’s a genuine question I’ve had for some time.

For a lot of virgins, religion is the motivator. Fornication is a sin, your bodies are supposed to be a temple, and your husband is the only person who should know you in that way, and so staying rooted in your spiritual conviction about not having sex is equal to not lying or getting drunk, or murdering someone. It’s a commandment that’s being kept. It’s a personal decision between you and God. But there’s something different to me about the sentiment of presenting your virginity as a gift to your husband. The choice isn’t just about you, but honoring your future husband in some way with your purity, but it makes me wonder, what are you getting in return, or is that even a concern? It’s certainly possible that a man could be a virgin until marriage too but the realities of the way men are nurtured suggest that likelihood is low.

Admittedly, pre-panty dropping, I was already a somewhat jaded virgin. I grew up in the church, I knew the commandments regarding your body, but eventually I began to think, what’s the point of waiting for marriage to give myself to someone who will have already sown enough wild oats to harvest a small colony. It certainly wasn’t a christian outlook on the matter but more of a logical one, perhaps even borderline womanist, thinking if he’s going to do him until we meet, why shouldn’t I do the same? Would I really want him to be the only one I slept with when he wouldn’t say the same? It was short-sighted thinking contrasted with the long-term goal women who remain virgins focus on. And even as virgins become more of a commodity in our oversexed society, the idea of saving oneself as a gift prevails and I wonder just how much the past of the men these women get involved with matters when it comes down to it. From what I’ve observed, it seems not much.

An older friend of mine who’s been married for about 10 years now told me for her she wishes she’d remained a virgin until marriage not necessarily to be pure in body but more so pure in mind. She’s expressed feeling like her bed is crowded because despite loving her husband and being with him only for more than the last decade, there are memories of how someone else did something or what someone else felt like or subconscious comparisons that you simply can’t block out once you’ve shared a bed with more than one person. Her husband expressed the same and in that sense, remaining a virgin seems like more than just a gift to your partner but also a gift to yourself. That’s a sentiment that I think is missed in Lolo’s rundown of her experience. She almost seems as though she’s racing to get across the finish line to finally have sex without any regard for the fact that the men who have tried to woo her by saying, if she has sex it will help her run faster, are not men she should want to marry or sleep with anyway.

No one knows exactly who they’ll marry as they develop as a person but it seems to be that the hope that the universe or God will bring a man whom is worthy of their pure bodies is the motivation that keeps women like Lolo on the path to have a gift to give her husband one day. When you think of it that way, it’s not hard to see how a man’s sexual past isn’t much of a hindrance if the man he is standing before you as today is worthy of receiving that gift.

Do you think concerns or cynicism over a future spouse’s sexual past ever effect choices regarding virginity?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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thinkstock.com

Does it matter to a woman if the man she is dating is a virgin? Do women prefer men with some sexual experience, or are they willing to teach inexperienced men about sex?

These questions can be of concern for a number of men who are trying to regain, sustain, or maintain a life of purity. There is a concern because some women may view men who are virgins or practicing abstinence in a less than masculine light because men are expected to be sexually aggressive. The women may view them as men who are afraid of physical intimacy, impotent, homosexual, or men who have something to hide. Remember all the buzz and suspicions about brothers on the down-low?

With the possibility of these thoughts lingering in a woman’s mind, a man’s ego and confidence may suffer. On the other hand, there are many women who may not be alarmed about dating men who are virgins or practicing abstinence. These women may view men who are virgins or abstinent as men who are sexually responsible, disciplined, and have established standards that are set apart from societies sexual standards for men. In these cases, a man’s ego and confidence is reassured. In a brief case study, a number of women were asked to list the pros and cons of dating men who are virgins and men who are abstaining. The results on the following pages gave many pause as to what how important or unimportant sex was in a relationship.

(Fast Company) — One of the truly jarring dimensions of the Great Recession is the death sentence it has imposed on of hundreds of brands, even whole companies, that were once familiar parts of the business landscape–not just bankruptcies, but liquidations and flat-out disappearances. Once-proud automobile nameplates, including GM’s Oldsmobile and Pontiac, and Ford’s Mercury, have become history. The ghosts of once-prominent (and now liquidated) retailers, from Circuit City to Virgin Megastores to Linens N Things, haunt shopping malls from coast to coast. And then there are the obituaries for so many newspapers, including the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and many more too depressing to list.

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