Next month’s issue of Glamour features an article about Purity Balls. I’d heard of Purity Balls before – Jessica Simpson was practically the poster child for the Abstinence movement, and Purity Balls gained some attention with her rise to fame. Regardless, as I read the Glamour article last night, I was horrified. Absolutely horrified.

A Purity Ball is a formal event, rather like a prom, in which fathers and their daughters vow to protect and preserve the daughter’s virginity for her future husband. Sometimes the father has to sign a pledge to this effect; sometimes the daughter signs a contract. Sometimes there is even a ring involved – a ring given by a father to his daughter as a symbol of her commitment to abstinence.

Although these young women are generally teenagers, one Purity Ball profiled in the Glamour article had girls as young as four in attendance. Four years old, and this girl is signing a contract to stay “pure” until marriage. Can you tell me she really knows what she’s signing?

Before I go any further with my rant, I should state that father-daughter bonding is a good thing. It’s also a good thing for parents to explore the topics of sex and relationships with their daughters (preferably when the daughters are a little older than four, though). Parents should discuss all of this with their sons, too. Abstinence should certainly be discussed, but so should birth control and responsible behavior in general.

But, Purity Balls just seem so wrong. Besides simply being creepy on many, many levels, the whole concept is a slap in the face to women’s rights. It implies (hell, sometimes even explicitly states) that the woman’s virginity is something to be guarded jealously by her father, until the girl marries. Then it becomes the possession of her husband.

Women as property. How primitive can you possibly get?

It suggests that the most valuable thing about a woman is her virginity. That’s a great message to send to your daughter. What happens if a girl who signed a Purity Pledge then goes on to break her pledge? Is she ostracized by her family, if she tells them? Or does she suffer unnecessarily in silence and shame?

My heart breaks for the poor girl who is raised in this way, thinking her virginity is the most important, special thing she has to offer. I wish I could tell her that she’s so much more than a walking hymen. I wish I could tell her that her sexuality is hers to own and control, not her father’s or her future husband’s. Whether or not to have sex should be her decision and hers alone.

Then there is the fact that these pledges appear to simply not work. It’s not uncommon for kids who pledge abstinence to eventually have pre-marital sex, studies suggest. A position paper in the Journal of Adolescent Health reports:

Two recent reviews [12,13] have evaluated the evidence supporting abstinence-only programs and comprehensive sexuality education programs designed to promote abstinence. Neither review found scientific evidence that abstinence-only programs demonstrate efficacy in delaying initiation of sexual intercourse. Likewise, research on adolescents taking virginity pledges suggest that failure rates for the pledge are very high, especially when biological outcomes such as STIs are considered [14]. Although it has been suggested that abstinence-only education is 100% effective, these studies suggest that, in actual practice, efficacy may approach zero.

What I find disturbing is this – if these kids come from an abstinence-only background, and are still having sex, what are the odds that they’re getting proper sex education? How many of them have been taught about condoms? How many know about pregnancy and STD’s, and how to prevent them? How many think that while vaginal intercourse is bad, oral and anal sex is okay, and maybe even safer? It’s terrifying to think about the ramifications.