What It Feels Like For A Girl*

*Borrowed from a beautiful revolutionary in the West, "What It Feels Like For A Girl" will be a new installation for this sad, neglected blog. W.I.F.L.F.A.G. will explore what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. Don't be shy (to post). We're all girls.

(Excerpts from a paper written by me, E.K. May, about the Madonna/Whore complex)

In sexual politics and cultural standards, female virginity is the ultimate good. A woman’s values are said to be determined by virginity (or the guise of virginity). Aside from her looks, a woman’s purity is to be safeguarded and treasured; by herself and one man. Conversely, female promiscuity is the ultimate bad; she is damaged but desired. Women must be the virgin or the whore and men will marry one and screw the other.
The virgin/whore dichotomy has long existed in sexual politics; from the Virgin Mary and the sinful temptress Eve; to the moral crusaders and the prostitutes of nineteenth century America; to Mary-Ann and Ginger here on Gilligan’s Island.
There is a hierarchal desire to categorize a woman into archetypes, linked almost exclusively to her sexuality. Hillary Clinton is a wench and a ball-buster. Sarah Palin is a mother, but a Mother I’d Like to Fuck (MILF). Lindsay Lohan is a whore. Miley Cyrus is a virgin (or a Madonna). But it is the ladder two stereotypes encapsulate the cultural expectation of female sexuality. The standard of two sexualities allows men to hate or idolize women (Leslie, 2007). Men can have their wife and their fantasy too; have their cake and eat it, too.
The Madonna is the utmost moral woman. She is on a pedestal; pure, chaste, and sacrificial. On the opposite end of the sexual spectrum of womanhood is Eve. Eve is the antithesis of Mary’s morality; she is the image of the whore. According to the book of Genesis, Eve is created by God from the rib of Adam. She is made from Adam’s rib and is therefore positioned as lesser and beneath him. Eve is tempted by the serpent to eat from the tree of knowledge. She complies and lures man (Adam) to eat also. She establishes original sin in humans. She cannot deny herself the fruit; she is lustful and carnal.
The juxtaposition of Mary as the virgin and Eve as the whore is contradictory and seemingly obvious. Yet, the common bond these iconic and immortal women share is less conspicuous. Mary’s selflessness brings forth the son of God, and Eve’s temptations create sin in which man takes part. The virgin/whore archetypes create an adventurous problem for man, “the Madonna as his dutiful helpmate and vision of purity, the whore as symbolic of the dangers and temptations he must overcome.” While women chose whether to be the Madonna or the whore, men choose who they want sexually.
The dichotomy of said virgins and whores is an abstract and culturally constructed concept of female sexuality. The division of women in to categories of virgins and whores is certainly the ideal, but moreover, it is an idea. That is to say, the virgin/whore dichotomy does not actually exist. Mothers and good women are not virgins; they bear children through sexual intercourse. A whore is not actually a whore. Certainly there were prostitutes, but a whore is usually only a woman who overtly takes pleasure from sex. But as sexuality, gender, and time progressed, and sexual standards evolved, curiously, the virgin/whore dichotomy persisted as the expectation for female sexuality: the faithful and the fantasy.