Despite
being a universal activity, virginity loss is a concept that each person might
define a little differently. Among my friend group in high school, we treated
it as something that should happen once you have developed a significant bond
with another person, someone who would treat you respectfully and sleep only
with you. The majority of the male population of my high school treated it more
as a life event that should happen as quickly as possible in order to define
their manhood and really grow into themselves. This differing schema of the
same event caused many tearful mornings among the females who fell victim to
this, however stereotypical this picture might look.
The
HBO show Girls portrays a variety of
sexual narratives and models. Shoshanna is the virgin of a quartet compiled of
four very different best friends, all the rest of whom are very sexually active.
In Season 1 Episode 4, “Hannah’s Diary,” Shoshanna rekindles a friendship with
a childhood acquaintance and immediately sees their night together as an
opportunity to lose her bothersome v card. Maura Kelly defines this mindset in
her study “Virginity Loss Narratives in “Teen Drama” Television Programs” as
following the urgency script, “which defines virginity as a stigma and
virginity loss as necessary to maintain social status and affirm gendered
identity.” Not only is sex treated as something that Shoshanna must get rid of
in order to be sexually attractive, traditional gendered stereotypes are upheld
in the interaction between Shoshanna and the boy. Upon being told that she is a
virgin, the boy immediately backs off and refuses to keep hooking up,
explicitly stating that he doesn’t “do virgins” for the very reason that they
become too attached. By saying this, he is supporting the idea of conventional
female emotional stereotypes and causing Shoshanna to have to forcibly deny
them as something very negative.
Although
this study supports Shoshanna’s portrayal of the urgency script, she goes
against some of Kelly’s theories in her enthusiasm to lose her virginity. The
episode never touches on the ““dilemma of desire” that female teenagers face: [defined
as] either accept and act on feelings of desire or remain safe from the “personal,
physical, social, material, or relational consequences of having that desire.””
Shoshanna displays no concern for judgment over being sexually active, which I
might argue is actually a step forward for feminism in that regard. She knows
what she wants, even if it might be subconsciously determined by sexist norms, and
goes for it. Unfortunately, the cultivated male aversion to attached females
gets in her way.
References
Dunham, L.
(2012). Hannah’s Diary. HBO. Season
1, Episode 4.
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