The Bizarre Christianist World of "Purity Balls"

For the record, I am the father of two girls - correction, two amazing young women, one 23 and one 30 - so I have some experience with raising daughters.  Which brings me to something that I deem really bizarre, if not almost sick and perverted in a sexual sort of way: daughters pledging their virginity to their dads.  True, one wants daughters who are responsible and who don't get themselves into trouble.  But pledging their virginity to me in years past.   I'm sorry, but this whole concept strikes me as creepy and at a minimum borderline incestuous.  But then again, since these "purity balls" are popular with the sexually repressed and sexually obsessed Christianist crowd, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.  Part of me cannot believe that these girls attending "purity balls" dreamed this ritual up on their own.  Mom and/or dad had to do some brainwashing and/or arm twisting.   A piece in Religion Dispatches looks at this bizarre practice.  Here are are excerpts:

As I watched Virgin Tales, a Swiss documentary about purity balls—dances where young girls pledge their virginities to their dads—I thought of my father often. Because the most compelling focus of the film wasn’t the events themselves, but the way in which one family’s dynamic can reveal so much about American culture and politics.

Filmmaker Mirjam von Arx follows the Colorado Springs-based Wilson family whose patriarch, Randy, invented purity balls. Von Arx focuses on one daughter in particular, Jordyn.

While other dads may have been teaching their daughters soccer, Randy was making sure that his little girls were focused on traditional feminine pursuits. Jordyn runs “the School of Grace” out of their home, where she gives advice to other young women on how to be properly ladylike. (She uses a book on etiquette from the 1920s to demonstrate how to modestly bend over at a water fountain, or how to greet people with a smile when they come into your home.)

His wife, Lisa, homeschooled their children and the “curriculum” speaks volumes. Daughter Kaalyn reads from an illustrated book: “Because you are my chosen princess you should dress modestly every day.”

“Sadly, there are a lot of girls that don’t think about me when they get dressed in the morning. They wear clothes that do not cover their bodies or that show their bodies in an immodest way. Keep your body covered and be my model.”

Later we see Randy building a hope chest for his daughter Kameryn that will be revealed at a ceremony held in the family living room. There, Kameryn is given her great-great-grandmother’s wedding ring as a purity ring and is taught about “fruitfulness.”

Even to the women who marry into the Wilson family, their roles are clear. Colton Wilson’s wife Anna tells us, “Because I love God I love my husband, regardless of whether or not I have feelings of affection for him in a given moment.”  “The command to love him is just that—it’s a command.”

As a feminist, I found the purity balls themselves the most difficult to watch. Young women and girls are dressed in ballgowns, their hair professionally done. They pose with their fathers under white arches decorated with flowers, like prom dates. And the midst of all this revelry, they promise to remain virgins and their fathers, in turn, pledge to be the protector of that “purity.”

Even now, after having written a book on purity culture and politics and having had met Randy in a truly bizarre interaction on a daytime talk show (don’t ask), they still affect me on a visceral level. The Wilsons claim to be offering an antidote to the hypersexualized pop culture that targets young women—but by defining girls so concretely by their virginity, they’re ensuring that young women will continue to be judged by what they do or don’t do sexually. The women who take virginity pledges and go to purity balls are promising that their bodies aren’t their own, but instead belong to their fathers and future husbands.

But despite the radical evangelicalism and sexism the Wilsons promote, as I watched the film I found it difficult not to root for Jordyn. Here’s a young woman—a bit awkward, and a lot unworldly—who just wants to be loved. She wants a happy life, a family, and to please her parents. And she wants it desperately. The boundaries of her goals may be more narrow than most women’s, but that kind of youthful desire and uncertainty are universal experiences.

The problem, of course, is that it’s not really about love. Sitting outside of a purity ball, in black-tie attire, Lisa tears up as she explains the events aren’t just about the party.

“It’s a beautiful moment with their father to say, ‘I care enough about you to invest in an expensive hotel and expensive meal and a lovely dress for you.’ To say that you’re valued.”

Women know the ways in which they’re valued. Whether we go to purity balls or rock concerts as young women, the limits of our worth in American culture are as subtle as a kick to the head. My hope is that not all of us will believe it, that we will want more for ourselves than subjugation dressed up in ballgowns (or bikinis). Until then, I hope we can find happiness and our own love stories.

Sick and bizarre.  I don't know what else to call these rituals.