By Allie MarkowitzPLAY Columnist
In this week’s installment of I Like To Tell Ridiculous Stories About My Life and Somehow Relate Them To Sex and You Fine People, I’d like to delve into the topic of virginity.
I came to Northwestern from sassy New York, where only one of my friends was still a virgin when we left for college. This friend, let’s call her Katie, is still waiting for Mr. Right – the guy who holds doors, rubs her back when she cries, volunteers to meet her parents, etc. She’s been waiting for nearly 21 years. Now she wants to just get it over with, but whenever she goes home with a guy and is about to take her pants off, something feels wrong so she leaves. I’m proud of her for having strong convictions, but I also fear for her. I’m convinced that most guys, especially in college, just don’t fit her description. I’ve snagged one of maybe 25 “perfect guys” of our 7,000-person school, and her college only has about 2,000 people. That ratio is ass. And as her college time fades, she becomes more concerned with life after graduation. If she’s still a virgin, will men think she’s some leper? A beautiful girl who hasn’t had sex but isn’t religious – she just has standards. But why can’t a beautiful girl get her thoughtful, kind, gentle hunk of a man? This circular thinking constantly occupies her time.
Growing up with TV shows like Dawson’s Creek, college-aged women were spoon-fed ideas about what our first times should be like. Candles, rose petals, loooove. But that’s not reality. Now I’m not trying to convince idealistic virgins to give up on finding their dream man in college. I don’t want all NU virgins to start ripping off their clothes en masse for any available man. But for the girls who aren’t waiting for marriage but can’t get past their standards, and I’m not saying they should, post-college life might be difficult. Certainly a lot of ‘splainin to do.
As I was walking home I started to wonder if you can tell if someone’s a virgin just by looking at them. I saw a boy riding a bike wearing a purple hat, a green jacket and a gigantic yellow backpack. I immediately, bitchily, thought “DEF a virgin,” because some small pathetic part of me believes guys must have some sense of style to get laid. And then I smelled Mexican food and forgot all about him.
But what do people think when they look at me? “Oh Lord, she is wearing a puffy jacket that engulfs her entire body, she looks like a walking marshmallow, AND she walks a little tilted? VIRGIN!” But I make no statements about my virginity. My mommy reads this.
Just don’t judge a virgin by their cover – or a slut by awful winter outerwear. You can’t tell what’s going on beneath the 12 layers of cotton. As for the Katies out there, do what feels right. Don’t settle, but if you get caught up in the moment, don’t regret it. It’s a rite of passage, sure, but at the end of the day, it’s what you and only you make of it. If it’s not a cymbal-crashing, honey-dipped, gilded memory permanently etched in your mind, that’s fine. Sometimes just ‘losing it’ is all it really is. Just don’t lose who you are in the process.
Medill junior Allie Markowitz is a PLAY sex columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].
