Virginity is an interesting subject to me and one that hasn’t seen a huge prominence in mainstream cinema. It’s usually an element played on the side, whether it’s seeing the loner kid from Chronicle finally get some action or Wes Craven pointing out how the virgin never dies.
As a dude who has had to handle his own sexlessness for what some think is a strangely long time (no, I’m not religious), I’ve been through the spectrum of virginity-influenced emotions. Sometimes I was prideful having never put myself inside the bitch who cheated on me or the drunk chick who was looking for any ol’ disco stick to ride. Sometimes I would take it as a depressing sign that I’m some sort of hideous creature incapable of being given physical love (it’s not true; I’m a solid 6/10).
I can’t give you an all-encapsulating answer as to why I’m still a virgin at the age of 23 (God knows I’ve been presented with enough chances), but there’s definitely a cocktail of different factors: arrogance, fear, intelligence, stupidity, scepticism, patience, confusion, philosophical impairment. Now that I’m older, I’ve broken the pendulum on those bipolar reactions with a pleasantly serene “go fuck yourself” mentality towards any potentially negative third-party judgements.
Don’t get me wrong: I’d rather get the sex I want. But since I’ve never found or been presented with said sex, I’ll make do with my imagination, a box of Sorbent and the A-B Repeat function on my laptop.
Suffice to say, I’m clued up in virginity matters. I’ve spent a portion of my college and Uni years studying sex and sexuality, for it’s a subject that has always intrigued me in a social context (it’s probably another factor that explains my accidental abstinence). However, I’m not going to claim to be any sort of expert. Experience IS vital to a full understanding of almost any subject, after all.
It was surprisingly difficult to find a distinctive bunch of well-known films that explored the nature of virginity and first-time sex. Unsurprisingly, the films I found take a comedic approach to the subject.
American Pie
In terms of the teen-boy sex-com I wanted to mention, it was a toss-up between this and Superbad. While I do admire what Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg expressed onscreen, American Pie is a much more integrated staple into Western teen virginity on film.
The insightful moral: Your first time will probably not be awesome (and that’s okay).
Throughout the entire movie, Kevin and Vicky had been preparing to take each other’s virginity right after prom (thus, taking their relationship to the ‘next level’ or some bullshit). Thinking the act would result in some sort of pleasurable perfection, the reality soon crushed their initial perception when they partake is some less-than-sub-par sex.
We’re given glimpses into their awkward love-making, filled with slow thrusting and confused glances. The following morning, Kevin tries to convince himself and his girlfriend that everything went according to plan. Vicky then calmly approaches him, saying how he can’t always plan everything. She was directly referring to how their long-distance relationship wasn’t going to work, but it was also a double entendre for their not-awesome first time. And that’s okay.
For a movie full of juvenile crassness, this was an enlightening moment that nailed its fairly simple point with a subtle sweetness.
The other moral: High-school is where you’re meant to lose your virginity.
The premise of American Pie (four dudes making a pact to lose their virginity before their high-school lives are over) plays to a commonly held perception of male virginity: high-school is where you’re meant to have your first time.
The negative side of this is what it implies about those that do NOT lose their virginity in high school, that they’re some sort of outlier. The film attempts to offset this discourse through Oz, the only guy out of the four who ‘broke the pact’. However, Oz is a ridiculously good-looking dude in a committed relationship, so intercourse was pretty much guaranteed for him anyway.
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Judd Apatow made his presence known as a movie comedy force with this film, not just because it’s so God-damn funny, but also treating the idea of a 40 year old virgin with understanding and respect rather than cheap condescension humour.
The insightful moral: Admitting your virginity isn’t as big of a deal as you may think
Most of the movie hinges on Andy’s (Steve Carell) ignorance in the sack as well as hiding the fact that he’s a virgin from a woman who is genuinely in love with him. This somehow leads her to believe that he’s a sex fiend, and in an attempt to explain that he’s not, he smashes into a side of a truck instead.
“Are you okay!?”
“I’m okay. No, I’m not okay. I’m a virgin.”
“…a what?”
“I’m a virgin… I always have been.”
“Oh Andy… is that what all this was about? You’re just a virgin? That’s all?”
It’s a refreshing reminder that a lack of sexual experience doesn’t make you some kind of freak or any less of a man in the eyes of people who actually matter.
You’ll find that decent girls aren’t going to care if you’re an older virgin*. You just need to trust them with that information. And if she rejects you on that basis alone, then you don’t need to waste your time with someone who solely judges a person’s worth based on how many sexual partners/venereal diseases they’ve had.
* Hell, they might even appreciate having a blank sexual canvas for them to mould.
Ultimately guys, virginity is only as bad as you make it out to be. If you think it’s a shameful quality, you’re going to be ashamed of yourself (I’ve experienced that false shame myself). It can be a hard feeling to shake given the powerful stigma associated to the word ‘virgin’, but you shouldn’t let that social perception affect how you view yourself.
Plus, a girl will find you a hell of a lot sexier when you’re confident about admitting your virginity as opposed to sobbing it into her pillow.
The other moral: If you want to lose your virginity, wax your chest.
Fuck. Off.
Easy A
Emma Stone starred in her breakout comedy as Olive, a teen who fools the social grapevine in believing that she’s deflowering a whole bunch of dude in her school in order to help them climb the social ladder (as well as fill her wallet).
I originally added this film in order to talk from a female perspective of virginity. However, considering the male and female experiences are VASTLY different from one another (and given my lack of a vagina), I figured it best not to embarrass myself in pretending I know what virgin women go through (hence, no Sixteen Candles).
But the film does make one point about virginity that I think is quite universal.
The insightful moral: Your first time should be determined by you, not by your social group.
The pressure to lose your virginity is all around you as a teen because at that age, we’re extremely susceptible to social influence. The film proves this by showing the segregating attitudes towards virgins and non-virgins.
In the end, Easy A calls bullshit on those demeaning attitudes when Olive says the following:
“I really like this guy, and I might even lose my virginity to him. I don’t know when it’ll happen. It might be five minutes from now, or tonight, or six months from now, or on our wedding night. But the really amazing thing is it’s nobody’s God-damn business.”
Full fucking stop.
The other moral: Hide the fact that you’re gay by fooling the school that you lost your virginity the ‘straight’ way.
The first guy Olive rumour-banged was her in-the-closet pal Brandon. When the suspicions of him being gay causes some jerks to pick on him, he feels the best course of action is to keep hiding who he truly is in favour of pretending he’s straight just like everyone else. It works, and he’s happier for it.
For a film that wears its liberalness on its 100% inorganic sleeve, it sure has a pretty reductive attitude towards homosexual expression. Maybe I’m looking too far into it and accusing the film more than I should, but it keeps biting at my mind.
The Sessions
I love this film. This comedic drama has been pleasuring critics with its true story of a 38-year-old virgin determined to have sex, despite being bed-ridden with polio (he still has feeling in his muscles; they just suck). He plans to achieve this with the help of a sex therapist (Helen Hunt).
The raw attitude towards the nudity and sex scenes in The Sessions filter out the exaggerated tantalisation we’re used to seeing in cinema. It leaves the film with a refreshing purity, showing us a side to sex that we often don’t see, yet rings so true.
The insightful moral (1): Losing your virginity can be really scary.
I can hardly imagine what distressing thoughts run through the minds of hymen-clad girls right before their first time, but for a lot of guys at least, there are a number of fears that emerge on the dawn of theirs (penis size, performance anxiety, premature ejaculation, etc.). Ignorance is the ultimate brewer of this fear, as was Mark O’Brien’s, freaking out at the thought of his penis being too big to fit.
Modern sexual education and porn-accessibility does a lot to eliminate such ignorance in today’s generation. But with only a sweaty hand for reference, virgin dudes will never be accurately prepared for what a vagina’s going to feel like*.
*unless they own a fleshlight, though I’m not aware of how well it replicates the real thing (Amazon have yet to dispatch mine)
However, as Mark found out when he first made penetration, the fear of the unknown can easily transform into the wondrous excitement of experiencing something novel. That exciting novelty will only last a few seconds, but would you rather a few seconds of anxiety or a few seconds of euphoria?
The insightful moral (2): The desire for sex goes beyond “because you gotta”.
During my later teen years, the motivation for having sex seemed fairly straightforward: it was ‘the thing’ to do, a rite of passage. For years, I had never thought of it being anything more than that, as do a lot of teens.
O’Brien loved women, and he desperately wanted to experience a true woman to the full physical extent. It’s a motivation that seems more genuine than “my mates are doing it, so should I”. Make no mistake though: the dude was also super fucking horny.
The other moral: Paying for sex still counts.
I’m really grasping at straws here, but there is one little facetious off-hand remark in the movie that had me wondering.
After the session with sex therapist Helen Hunt were over, Mark O’Brien charms the proverbial pants off a woman he meets in the hospital. Nailing a date and sealing the deal, he closes with the line “I’m not a virgin”.
Subjectively, I’m going to say that you can’t pay to have your virginity taken from you. Sure, a virgin by definition is someone who has not had sexual intercourse, so I can see how doing it with a hooker can technically count. But I personally feel that there needs to be some mutual basis for either person to want to have sex with each other (thus, rape would not count).
Helen Hunt’s character is not a prostitute, and you could make the argument that she did desire O’Brien briefly near the end of these sessions. But it’s still a minor point I wanted to express, one that I do not hold against the film at all.
I would like to see more mainstream movies explore post-teen virginity in an understanding light. If you take a step back, you can see how ‘never had sex’ approaches the over-populated realm of first world problems, but it’s a topic that a lot of people (older guys in particular) have a lot of trouble talking about, let alone admit to. With an audience that is willing to relate to such matters, I think it’s a movie subject that begs to be mined more thoroughly.
As for my own virginity, it’s something I’ve stopped being hidden about. I understand that my first time probably won’t be awesome, but I’m backed by my desire to learn and motivated by my love of the beautiful female form (as well as my biological horniness). Many things have helped me in understanding that I don’t need to be ashamed of it, and cinema is one of them.
And thanks to movies, I know exactly where to find the clitoris.
