Virgins Wanted carries a high price

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/25/virgins-wanted-high-price-brazilian-woman

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Can you put a price on virginity? An Australian documentary team has attempted to, having auctioned off a 20-year-old Brazilian woman named Catarina Migliorini for the cool sum of $780,000 and generating much press coverage in the process. Meanwhile her male counterpart, a lad named Alexander Stepanov, was "sold" for a mere $3,000, although perhaps this was par for the course. While female virginity is prized, if not full-on fetishised in most societies, there aren't many sexually experienced women who fantasise about 25 seconds of awkward passion with a male virgin, though I might be being unfair.

Members of the documentary's Facebook page, Virgins Wanted, were treated to 32 pictures of a lithe and tanned Migliorini in her scanties, while only four snapshots of Stepanov were released (in which he is doing karate moves, fully clothed). I must say, the juxtaposition of Migliorini's smooth buttocks with Stepanov's blue steel karate gaze is most peculiar, pushing me in a twilight place between horror and mirth. This story has too many levels of WTF for me to handle.

On first glance, this story sets off an immediate women-as-commodities klaxon. The way that Migliorini has been marketed is pretty much as objectifying as you can get. We know very little about her, except that she is a physical education student (no pun intended) from Santa Catarina, a state in southern Brazil. The trailer films her undertaking many traditional feminine activities – such as smiling and frolicking on a beach – but at no point do we hear the participant's voice.

Although it's clear from the outcome of the auction that female virginity is eminently more sellable than male virginity, members of both sexes are still being sold. In this sense, the shitty structure of advanced capitalism that we inhabit takes no prisoners, regardless of one's gender. Stepanov and Migliorini have both allegedly chosen to sell their virginities on telly, and perhaps I shouldn't patronise them by implying that they aren't able to make their own choices.

Migliorini's "business decision", as she has called it in the one verbal snippet available to the press, operates within a structure where women's virginities have been treated as commodities for hundreds of years. So although she has technically chosen to flog it, the whole system that makes it floggable has existed for aeons. Time was that your dad would trade your hymen for a few goats and some grain, and the only difference is that now papa has been replaced by a new middleman – in the form of a pervy Australian internet site. That's progress though, right?

Well, perhaps. Migliorini has made it clear that she doesn't consider the transaction to be prostitution, saying: "If you only do it once in your life then you are not a prostitute, just like if you take one amazing photograph it does not automatically make you a photographer." Damn right. I've written at least 20 pieces for the Guardian, and according to some commenters I'm nowhere near being a "journalist". But at least Migliorini is claiming that she will give the money to charity, which adds a nice fuzzy do-gooding dimension to the media circus (presumably Stepanov is just going to go on one hell of a bender). We're told the money will go towards building houses in her home state, which in her words will be making "a big difference in my area". Although it is described as one of the places in Latin America with the highest standards of living, it's not for me to speculate as to the neediness of its residents. The notion that the money is allegedly going to empower some people, if not Migliorini herself provides a neat distraction from the grimmer aspects of the transaction.

And what are they, you ask? The Virgins Wanted terms and conditions state that "the female virgin will undergo a medical examination by an accredited gynaecologist and provide the winning bidder with medical evidence of her virginity". Retro. Meanwhile, Stepanov gets off lightly: "Given the difficulty in certifying a male's claim to virginity, we ask that you take into consideration the chosen participant, his story and his demeanor when considering his claims to sexual abstinence." So we'll just take his word for it, then. And of course, we all know that there isn't really any medical way to prove virginity – you can lose your virginity to a tampon, a finger or a horse's saddle. This is one of the reason's society's prizing of virginity is so bizarre.

A comment on the Daily Mail's take on the story sums up this attitude: "At least she is smarter than most women in the UK, who give it away for free." What fools we are. All I got was a hangover and a trip to the STD clinic, which is nowhere near as good as 780 grand (then again, my big moment didn't take place on an aeroplane flying between Australia and the US in order to counteract international prostitution laws, but on dry land within easy distance of a hot water bottle). Yet, I didn't feel that I had "lost" or "given away" anything. Those words take away any agency on the woman's part, and if anything, having sex for the first time allows you to gain something – whether it's cash, kudos, press attention or chlamydia. Personally, I'd opt for experience every time.