Purity ball

A purity ball (also known as a father-daughter purity ball or purity wedding [http://www.drewrybroadcasting.com/kwescal/view_entry.php?id=132&date=20080801 Purity wedding for teenagers] . Quote: "The graduates will have a wedding to celebrate their choice and desire to be chase."] ) is a formal event attended by fathers and their daughters. Purity balls promote virginity until marriage for teenaged girls, and are often closely associated with U.S. Christian churches, particularly fundamentalist churches.

Purity balls can vary in many particulars, but fathers who attend typically pledge to protect their young daughters' purity in mind, body and soul. Daughters are expected to remain virgins, abstaining from pre-marital sexual intercourse. A stronger father-daughter relationship is promoted as a means to affirm spiritual and physical purity.

Criticism

Writer Eve Ensler criticizes purity balls for what she sees as the position of inferiority it puts the daughters in:

:"When you sign a pledge to your father to preserve your virginity, your sexuality is basically being taken away from you until you sign yet another contract, a marital one...It makes you feel like you’re the least important person in the whole equation. It makes you feel invisible." [http://www.glamour.com/news/articles/2007/01/purityballs07feb Would you pledge your virginity to your father?] ; "Glamour"; January, 2007; Jennifer Baumgardner. See page 6.]

Purity balls have also drawn criticism from some Christians; in the "Chicago Sun Times", Betsy Hart writes:

:I'm an evangelical Christian who firmly believes that sex should be reserved for marriage. But I just can't imagine going about it this way with any of my four kids, son or daughters ... I can't help but wonder if a single-minded focus on virginity is an ironic, and unintended way, of sexualizing youth in a different way..."Betsy Hart, "Chicago Sun-Times" ( [http://www.suntimes.com/news/hart/241908,CST-EDT-HART04.article link] defunct; see [http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache:0FlW-petYvIJ:www.ladymajora.com/purity-balls-t6876.html%3Ft%3D6876&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us Google cache] )]

:The events have been called odd, creepy, oppressive of a girl's "sexual self-agency," as one USA Today columnist put it. Father-daughter bonding is great, the critics agree--but wouldn't a cooking class or a soccer game be emotionally healthier than a ceremony freighted with rings and roses and vows? Some academic skeptics make a practical objection: The majority of kids who make a virginity pledge, they argue, will still have sex before marriage but are less likely than other kids to use contraception, since that would involve planning ahead for something they have promised not to do. This puts them at risk for sexually transmitted diseases. [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1823930,00.html The Pursuit of Teen Girl Purity] ; Time Magazine; July 17, 2008; Nancy Gibbs]

ee also

* Purity ring
* Virginity pledge
* Abstinence-only sex education

References

External links

* [http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1822906,00.html?iid=redirect-purity The Purity Ball] : Time Magazine photo essay of a purity ball
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/us/19purity.html Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose] , "New York Times" article and photo essay on purity balls