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A Change That’s Not for the Better
The Sad Subtext of “The 40 Year Old Virgin”...
[Carol Platt Liebau] 8/15/05

There’s an upcoming movie being hyped relentlessly – including this weekend in the “Calendar” section of The Los Angeles Times. It’s called The 40 Year Old Virgin.

And of course, it’s a comedy. What else would a movie with the word “virgin” in the title be?

In fact, in today’s culture, the very concept of “virginity” has become a joke. It’s worth recalling that, back before the sexual revolution, society recognized that had a stake in young people’s sexual status. American society had rules – from parietals at college to expectations about dating behavior – that were aimed at ensuring that women, in particular, remained virgins until marriage. Those times have now been caricatured as a time of prurient and unyielding obsession with young women’s sexual status, when nosy prudes just couldn’t wait to destroy the reputation of “free spirited” girls who refused to abide by society’s sexual dictates.

Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Apparently, these days one’s sexual status is still everyone’s business – but this time, the goal is to ensure that no one remains a virgin until marriage. Most of the movie’s comedy supposedly derives from the measures that the “virgin” endures upon the recommendation of his friends – like chest-waxing – so that he may reach the nirvana of commitment-free recreational sex. In fact, the entire point of “The 40 Year Old Virgin” is to poke fun at a lovable loser who has reached early middle age without – gasp! – having slept around.

How weird! How deviant! Apparently, it never occurs to the movie’s creators that there could, actually, be a man who – because of religious conviction, lack of opportunity, or maybe even fastidiousness – has decided to wait to find his lifetime partner before engaging in sex. The Los Angeles Times piece on the movie notes that the movie’s director and film executives even worried about “the serial killer thing” – that is, the idea that the audience might associate the lead character with a serial killer. Virginity is, presumably, just that weird.

With movies like The 40 Year Old Virgin at the box office, abstinence-only advocates and birth control purveyors can fight it out in every school in America until kingdom come, and nothing will change. That’s because American culture is now sending a message that youthful, premarital sexual activity is expected and acceptable – and that abstinence is unusual to the point of abnormality.

Certainly, there will always be the young men and women of religious faith, or strongly influenced by parents with traditional values, who decide to wait until marriage for sex. But increasingly, they become the exception to the extent that popular culture marginalizes, or even mocks, them.

The culture now tells a young person to have sex with whomever s/he wants, whenever s/he wants, however s/he wants. Perhaps as a result, 35% of young women have been pregnant by age 20. Given the immediate and devastating effects that can result from premarital sex – disease, pregnancy, and the emotional and psychological distress that can result from giving too much, too soon – it’s hard to believe that America can’t forge a social consensus for change.

Do the feminists and other cultural revolutionaries who prided themselves on breaking down the old prohibitions against premarital sex ever realize that the cultural norms they derided were actually empowering, especially to women? The connection between sex and love and commitment was clear. Those who wanted to engage in premarital sex could do so – but those who decided to abstain until marriage had reinforcement from the dominant culture (a sensible arrangement, given the well-documented links between poverty and other social pathologies and single-parent families).

Today, the social pressure works the other way – there’s no cultural code that young people can invoke when pressured by a would-be sexual partner, and no social counterweight to the impulsive choices that can result from the heady mix of youth and hormones. That’s a shame, especially for the young people who end up damaged, physically or emotionally, as the result of even one poor choice.

As we all laugh along at the “pathetic” 40 Year Old Virgin, it’s worth asking – are we all really better off in a world that ridicules sexual purity and restraint? tOR

Columnist Carol Platt Liebau is a political analyst, commentator and theOneRepublic / CaliforniaRepublic.org editorial director based in San Marino, CA. Ms. Liebau also served as the first female managing editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her web log can be found at CarolLiebau.blogspot.com

copyright 2005

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