Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences by Laura Carpenter Page B

had not begun to em- brace the new theories of sexuality, advanced by the likes of Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis, which proposed that all humans were inher- ently sexual and that sexual repression of either gender caused more harm than good. 101
    In this context of growing gender equality and recognition of women’s sexuality, many young White middle-class women saw cultivating sexy, feminine personas as a means of demonstrating their independence and modernity (a practice encouraged by the burgeoning mass media and ad- vertising industries). 102 The dawn of “sex appeal” did not, however, dis- rupt the prevailing belief that women’s virginity represented a gift ideally given at marriage. The “typical” White college woman interviewed by journalists Dorothy Bromley and Florence Britten “did not intend to go the limit with any boy because she believed in ‘giving her whole self when she married’ ”; and advice manuals noted regretfully that some girls, “when in love,” believed that virginity “is the only thing they have to give.” 103
    However, some young women (primarily the highly educated) were be- ginning to interpret virginity loss as a rite of passage, or step in the process of growing up, a potentially egalitarian view popularized in the late 1920s by Margaret Mead and other anthropologists. 104 In Bromley and Britten’s estimation, such women were “in almost as great a hurry to cast aside their virginity as their grandmothers were to let down their skirts and put up their hair.” 105 A few young women even seemed to feel stigmatized by their virginity, like the Midwestern girl who said of her

    own first lover, “I felt apologetic about being a virgin, and thought that the man was doing me a favor.” 106
    For their part, many men clearly still wished to be their wife’s first and only sexual partner. “I realize how selfish it is on my part,” wrote one of Bromley and Britten’s respondents, “but I feel that 90 per cent of men will demand the same.” 107 However, many also expressed willingness “to forgo virginity in a wife who has been sincere in her past love.” 108 The increas- ing acceptability of nonvirginity in women derived in large part from cul- tural ideals linking love, marriage, and sexuality; for if sexual intercourse was to be seen as an appropriate expression of committed love, then pre- marital virginity loss could be forgiven when inspired by an “all-consum- ing love” (especially if a couple were engaged). 109 Still, a woman’s social class and race often determined whether she received the benefit of the doubt. Expert and popular literature of the 1920s and 1930s perpetuated the image of working-class women and women of color as uniquely prone to using their sexuality for material gain and losing their virginity “with- out reflection and without motive, in an almost animalistic manner.” 110
    For White middle-class men, the chief effect of the new theories of sex- uality was that injunctions to repress their sexuality were replaced by warnings that, in the words of Freud, “complete abstinence in youth is often not the best preparation for marriage. . . . Women sense this, and prefer among their suitors those who have already proved their mas- culinity with other women.” 111 Although outright rejection of the Chris- tian ideal of male premarital chastity placed a man “just beyond the bound of respectability,” Bromley and Britten reported that many a man who remained a virgin in college felt “inclined to think I am something of a sissy.” 112 “Decent” young men, epitomized by Hugh Carver, were ex- pected to prefer sex with love over sex for its own sake. By the mid-1930s, many young women claimed to prefer sexually experienced husbands.
    The majority of the women in Bromley and Britten’s survey

    discounted their future husband’s virginity. Those who intended to wait for marriage argued that they would want to be initiated into the great