Abstinence for sale – very cheap!!!

I think it’s safe to say I’m sexually progressive (and by “progressive,” I don’t mean “promiscuous.” I mean “progressive.” There’s a big dif. Haul out your dictionary if you’re still baffled). I naturally tend to default to Feminism (yes, it deserves to be a proper noun) in my philosophy on life, liberty,  and the pursuit of literature; Planned Parenthood and I are super-homies, in services, support, and volunteering efforts; and I’m all about giving away free condoms to people, whether that be in the bathroom at a club or on the library’s bridge at Clemson two days before Spring Break. Good times, VOX.

Have a safe Spring Break!

Gardasil should become a mandatory vaccine, all OB/GYN visits should be free, abstinence-only sex-ed should be outlawed (and all the millions in federal funding Bush II gave it should be directed toward the comprehensive sexual education that, up until now, was lambasted pretty much as whore-mongering), and birth control should be easier to obtain than a WMD. I’m just saying…

That's what I'm talking about...

But this? Please. On your iPhone? Bitch, please. Talk about cashing in on the raging insecurities of misunderstood teens in the throes of their awkward, hormonal adolescences and their parents who would rather take a false solace in a swirling LOTR-inspired image than talk to their own kids about (gasp!) sex.

Purity Rings, in themselves, are a joke. Let’s hug it out.

A) Virginity is a completely arbitrary concept manufactured by the Catholic Church in a manipulatory attempt to control and domesticate females and promulgated into an oblivion during the Victorian Era for political and societal dominance (please refer to the Medicis, the Borgias, Elizabeth I, Victoria, and Mina Loy if you don’t believe me, hater). Hello? It’s like one, huge inferiority complex personified by white wedding dresses.

B) Convincing eleven-to-sixteen-year-olds to make a decision you brainwash them into believing is the epitome of gravity during their early adolescence about something that won’t affect them until ten years later, when they are in completely different life situations and have a firmer grasp of reality, just so you can add another mark to your running tally, is unrealistic and, honestly, jejune, as the potential, almost inevitable, capriciousness of their decisions completely undermines the basis of the “cause.” 

C) A ring can be taken off as simply as a condom can be put on.

D) My mother is a travel agent for guilt trips, and only she, and her continuing, Catholic-influenced diatribe aimed at my way of  life, can attempt (unsuccessfully) to change what she considers to be my roguish ways. The woman gave birth to me. She gets that much. So don’t try pulling that “God will smite you and your naughty bits” routine on me because I kiss boys.

E) These rings, and the novelty behind them, create a false ideal. So while abstaining to have S-E-X until marriage is all well and good, a ring cannot quell the surging tsunami that is teenage hormones. And when the two are combined, the resulting situations range from: “good kids” becoming the “everything, but” kids (ah, Spring. When a young man’s fancy turns to Herpes); couples spending all of their parents’ money to get hitched at eighteen, because they really want to have sex, but won’t do it before marriage (sans college education, a means to support themselves fully, and the prescience to understand that a contractually bound legal agreement means it’s going to cost a lot of [your parents'] money if, on the wedding night, while the blind is canoeing the blind, one decides the other has but a wisp of a penis or a whacky vaj and just can’t live with it for the rest of their lives); and the potential for a whole lot of moral ostentatiousness on the part of ring-wearers against non-ring-wearers. Lovely.

F) Celebrity example time! Britney? Epic fail. Jessica Simpson? Fleeting win, then monster fail, seeing as how when her marriage, into which she entered at nineteen, ended in divorce two years later, she renigged on that whole “purity thing” by hooking up with everyone in Hollywood, including The John Mayer Manwhore Train. The Jo Bros, or whatever they’re called? Clearly homosexual. Miley Cyrus? Clearly an asexual droid, programmed at an immaturity/annoyance factor of 11 (on a scale of 1-10).

Do I judge? Of course I do. I judge immediately, and then it’s up to you to make me not loathe you (so hop to it). But I’m not a hypocrite. If you are truly genuine in this whole ring business and the “abstaining until marriage” thing, more power to you. I fully support you. But don’t hypocritically judge me because I think the rings, and what they have come to realistically represent (whether on a finger or an iPhone), are a load of bullshit.

But on your iPhone? That moral ostentatiousness just morphed into tangible ostentatiousness. Why do teens have iPhones in the first place? Gah. And if you’ve already paid six-hundred bones for a phone that your teen obviously doesn’t need (as I’m sure they don’t teach business mergers in high school), then why call it good with just the $.99 app instead of forking over an additional twenty bucks for the actual ring for them to wear, you cheap bastard? Oh, because the rings are unfashionable now? Because it’s much less noticable for a teen to take the app of his phone than to remove the Purity Ring? So, is this just Abstinence-Lite? Sa-weeeeet. Sign me the eff up.

Maybe I’ll create an app that has the Nuva-Ring and a condom swirling around each other in the same deific, watercolored hues, possibly with some halcyon, awe-inpiring clouds in the background. Or maybe I’ll just bling out one of my birth control packets and put it on a necklace so everyone and their dog can see that I’ve publicly made the decision to make my own decisions about my sexuality.