TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
This is what virginity on television looks like.
TV writer Willa Paskin has a good piece over at Salon about TV’s tortured virgins: “Shame-free virginity: not currently a fictional TV offering.” True, but what’s interesting about the three virgins she covers is how they react to the “shame” of being a virgin.
Two of TV’s most famous virgins are women: April Kepner (Sarah Drew) on Grey’s Anatomy and Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mament) on Girls. Both are surrounded by friends who are always having sex and both are self-conscious about their virginity.
April:
At the beginning of last season [of Grey's], the high-strung, cheery Kepner (a common characteristic of TV virgins is a type-A, neurotic personality) yelled at her colleagues, in an effort to quell their merciless teasing, “I am a 28-year-old virgin, namely because I wanted my first time to be special and then I waited too long, and partially because I’m pretty sure guys find me annoying.” She then spent the next year and a half flirting, making out with and never quite sleeping with a series of guys who weren’t right for her, without once mentioning chastity or a higher power.
Then last Thursday, she threw herself on fellow resident Jackson, assuring him — after he kept repeating to her, out loud, “You’re a virgin” — that having sex with him was really what she wanted to do. The next day, she seemed shell-shocked. When Jackson tried to apologize, she explained, “It’s not you. It’s Jesus. I was a virgin because I loved Jesus. And now Jesus hates me.”
And Shoshanna:
A devotee of “Sex and the City” and books with titles like “Listen Ladies,” the abashed Shoshanna thinks of her virginity as an embarrassment, and her friends, though sweet about it, basically agree. When Shoshanna tells Marnie (Allison Williams) that “I am almost 22 and I am a virgin. Everyone and their mother has had sex except for me,” Marnie doesn’t quite know what to say. She tries to comfort Shoshanna by asking if she’s ever given a blow job, which is “basically the same thing.” Shoshanna hasn’t. Marnie, at a loss, then shares a story about how she hit a puppy with her car. Puppy killer and virgin, semi-equivalent mortifications.
But there’s another more interesting virgin on TV that Paskin covers: Sherlock Holmes, who returns this Sunday to PBS for the second season of the show:
Sherlock, it seems, is a virgin. Adler reveals that Holmes’ arch-nemesis, Moriarty, calls him just that (as opposed to on “Girls” and “Grey’s,” only Holmes’ enemies laugh at him), and when Adler asks Sherlock if he’s ever had sex, Holmes, for maybe the first and only time, looks uncomfortable. Prior to Irene’s appearance, this question wouldn’t have mattered to him at all. Sherlock, as a rule, doesn’t care what anyone else thinks, let alone thinks of him, but in the presence of a woman he’s actually interested in, even the great Holmes becomes a smidge embarrassed.
But this flash of insecurity and emotion is only temporary.
Unlike April and Shoshanna, Sherlock does not allow his virginity—and his sex—to define him. For April and Shoshanna, sex is what they’re always thinking about; it’s what they psychologically organize their lives around; it’s who they are. Sherlock, by contrast, is a detective first and foremost. While the virginity of the April and Shoshanna is equated, on their respective television shows, with naivete and inexperience, the same cannot be said of the cosmopolitan and sharp-minded Holmes. His virginity is not a scarlet letter, but it takes on a monastic quality. Being a virgin for Sherlock is a much more dignified experience than it is for April and Shoshanna. Sex and women are distractions from his greater, heroic calling.
Can you think of any other pop-culture virgins and how they react to their virginity on the big or small screen? (There's of course The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which deserves a blog post of it's own.) I'm specifically wondering if male virgins are treated differently than female virgins. My hunch is they are.
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May '10
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
I wonder, do these Hollywood writers not know any actual Christians? Do they think it's not important to know them--what they think, what they value, what motivates them--before they create characters and make story lines around Christian beliefs?
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
katievs
I wonder, do these Hollywood writers not know any actual Christians? Do they think it's not important to know them--what they think, what they value, what motivates them--before they create characters and make story lines around Christian beliefs? · 12 minutes ago
They clearly regard them with contempt.
Apr '11
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
Jerry dated a virgin in Season 4 of Seinfeld.
Alternative-reality Fat Monica was a 30-year-old virgin in Season 6 of Friends.
In neither case was the virginity portrayed positively. (Both episodes were pretty darn funny, though.)
Sep '10
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
Paul A. Rahe
katievs
I wonder, do these Hollywood writers not know any actual Christians? Do they think it's not important to know them--what they think, what they value, what motivates them--before they create characters and make story lines around Christian beliefs? · 12 minutes ago
They clearly regard them with contempt. · 48 minutes ago
Christians are the new lepers. Best give them their own colony. Thirteen maybe.
Jul '11
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
Lately it seems that most Hollywood types and reporters are not Christian, do not know anything about any Christian beliefs and do not know any Christians. I am amazed by number of times I see Christians and their beliefs represented completely wrong by both the media and the entertainment industry.
Nov '10
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
I think Barney the Dinosaur has that distinction.
And when the whole controversy over Bert and Ernie got to the Sesame Street crowd I believe there was a news release to this effect concerning one, or both, of them.
Nov '10
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
Also, I've not followed closely for the last season or two, but hasn't Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory still got his flowers intact?
Nov '10
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
I've long thought of posting an actual diagram for this, but instead I'll explain it in words.
On a horizontal line segment, draw a continuum of human physical intimacy. On the left, no contact whatsoever. Then physical proximity, conversation, shared jokes, glances, knowing looks. A pat on the shoulder or head. Shaking hands. Two hands on the shoulders, and looking in the eyes. A hug. A peck on the cheek. And so on to full intercourse (in all senses of the word).
On a vertical line put a continuum of human commitment and personal intimacy. At the bottom total strangers, through acquaintances, friends, pals, "dates", steadies, down to committed married lifetime monogamous partners.
At an angle a curve on this axis system projects from "the origin" upwards and to the right. This is a picture of a healthy progression of sexual love. We may differ on how that curve bends -- concave up, concave down, etc. But every human instinctively knows that it is there.
Above the line: repressed affection and intimacy. Below it: debauchery. At least 90% of that line represents healthy virginity.
Oct '11
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
Grey's and Girls are TV's equivalent of chic lit. Sherlock is good old fashion mystery/suspense.
I've never watched Grey's but I imagine their virgin is much like the virgin on Girls- less a real character and more straw-man counter point to the protagonists point of view/lifestyle. These virgins essentially exist to validate and reassure the main characters and viewers choices/world views.
It's still considered a bit uncouth for a woman to attack another head on for their sexual past. Even if it's something they consider really icky and stupid like virginity.
So they go the condescension route, She's stupid, naive, overly girly, and/or worse, religious. It's the old atheist rhetorical trick, in which you get to sound kindhearted, wise, and open minded while making it clear your opponent is a simpleton, best pitied but paid no mind to. "There but for the grace of Science go I!"
Sherlock's very point of existence is to act as a counterpoint to the everyman. He's a mental Übermensch barely invested in anything terra firma except the few moments of genuine curiosity it occasionally manages to supply him.
Oct '11
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
You have to go elsewhere to find the portrayal of average male virginity in pop culture. In general it can be broken down to three categories: the desperate adolescent horndog, the walking after-birth, and the psychopath/serial killer. There's often varying degrees of overlap between the three.
That's why the 40 year old virgin works so well. It plays with society's expectations of these three archetypes (primarily the second) and then circumvents them.
Edited on May 5, 2012 at 6:55pmFeb '12
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
There's barely a hint of chastity or even modesty in television anymore. I'm not sure the logical response is to ask whether the treatment of the few chaste or modest characters is somehow sexist.
Nov '10
Re: TV's Virgins: The Tortured Kind & the Dignified Kind
I'll add another one: the hopeless beta-male geek. For some reason, apparently Big Bang Theory doesn't really go with this, despite being blatant nerd black-face.