Can there be a perfected purity ball?
In a 2007 Glamour article on the Wilsons, Jennifer Baumgardner suggested that purity balls “represent [the abstinence movement’s] more extreme edge. The young women who sign covenants at these parties tend to be devout, home-schooled, and sheltered from popular culture.” Many fathers involved had similar complaints. “They allow girls as young as 8, 9 years old to attend,” said Devin Kessler, a father who attended a ball for high-school-age girls. “And I don’t think that’s right. Those girls are too young to know what it’s all really about.” Another father called the original ball “cheesy,” something his daughters wouldn’t be interested in. Brown said he thought the name was “terrible,” but that he knew he’d attract more interest with “Purity Ball” than, say, “Sexual Integrity Ball.”
“We didn’t like the name,” Brown said, “but we used it as a way of creating an image, however inaccurate.” He can see why people are disturbed by the Ball’s wedding symbolism, but he thinks they’re too quick to criticize. “There’s evidence that these types of events do help. Some studies show that people who participate in these events have a longer time to first intercourse and a smaller number of partners. People say that’s a failure because they break them, but that’s kind of like saying Donald Trump was a financial failure because he wasn’t a billionaire when he was 14.”
Wilson sees the ball evolving into a more focused call to the men to be fathers. “It’s a time to have fun, to dance, and build relationships,” he said, “but it is a call for men to be fathers, for men to be men, and to step in and stand in that role as a man, because it impacts the community around them. I’d love to see a shift from the focus on the physical.”
But the other fathers I spoke with seemed more interested in reconciling their religious beliefs with their goal to rationally advise and communicate with their daughters about the unnerving topic of sexuality.
“There’s really nothing else out there that I’m aware of that gives dads and daughters a platform to talk about these issues,” Frost said. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to give us a really nice evening together, and to talk about something that could be uncomfortable.” Paul Dyer, a 25-year-old father who promotes local Purity Balls on his religious radio station, believes the event gives daughters the message that “we as fathers believe in them, and that we’ll be there to help them if things get tough. The reason that a girl decides to wait sexually is because she knows her value. And this is an opportunity for the father to really hit home how valuable she is.”
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“The reason to have an event like this is to establish communication, to keep lines of communication open,” Brown said. “We value our daughters, so we want to do something like this to show them how much we love and care about them.” He sends weekly “suggested discussion topic” emails out to both fathers and daughters in the five weeks prior to the Ball. The emails tackle complicated questions about dating, sex, and relationships. “Our objective is that the Purity Ball should be a culmination of conversations, not a one-time discussion.”
One email lists scenarios in which girls might one day find themselves, such as “You’re a freshman in college, and your non-Believing roommate has a party. You meet a guy there who is nice, gentlemanly, and very attractive. He invites you to leave the party and go out for a cup of coffee. What do you say? If you say yes, and while you’re drinking your latte he invites you to go with him to the game next Saturday, what do you say? Or, if he invites you to go back to his dorm, what do you say?”
Another: “You are 29 years old, and you aren’t married yet. When you committed yourself to purity in high school, you thought you’d be married at least by age 22. Should you still stick with your commitment to purity? Why?”
The email assures fathers and daughters that answers will not be the same for everyone. “You cannot inherit your convictions; you have to build your own,” it reads. “Do you know what you believe? Do you know why you believe it?”
Each father I interviewed said it was more important for his daughter to feel loved and respected so that she could make the right choices about sex, than for her to abstain from sex until marriage. “Ultimately, it is her decision,” said Frost, who added that he would “totally understand” and not be “disappointed in the least” if his daughter “made a mistake.” “You can’t lock your children in the house,” Dyer said. “[Premarital sex] can’t be a relationship ender.” Brown agreed: “It isn’t just about sex or signing a commitment; the objective is to be able to talk about what sex should be and to communicate my values about sexuality in general.”
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What does it mean to pledge purity?
Both fathers and daughters sign separate commitments in Brown’s Purity Ball ceremony. The father’s promise includes the pledge to “always be willing to rescue her from difficult situations, saving questions for later,” and to “strive to communicate with her in a gentle and understanding way when she shares her soul with me.” In return, the daughter promises to “respond to my father’s leadership until I am under the leadership of my husband.”
In Brown’s covenant, both pledge to “strive to maintain the highest standards of purity in my own life in thought, word, and deed.” But Brown never specifies what the “highest standard of purity” is, exactly—or what purity means at all. How can one pledge to be pure if the meaning of purity is unclear?
To be fair, it’s a hard term to define, so I asked each father how they’d best explain the concept of purity to their daughters. “Purity means having a good understanding of the value of sexuality and how awesome it is, how special sex is,” Dyer said. “We need to have an understanding of sexuality in our everyday lives. We’re all sexual beings; we bring our sexuality into every situation no matter how old we are.” I asked him more specific questions: was premarital oral sex OK? “Definitely not.” How about masturbation? After a pause: “No.” Kissing? “Maybe.”
Kessler offered this: “Purity is a state of mind; it’s knowing where you stand with God.” But he couldn’t give me a specific definition, and faltered when I pressed him: would he be OK with fondling as opposed to oral sex? Are they equally “impure”?
So if purity is truly a state of mind and a personal choice, why convolute an already complicated issue by asking your daughter to participate in a ritualized public event? That’s not a father-daughter bond, it’s a burden. Or worse, coercion by shame. Reverend Steve Clapp, a Church of the Brethren minister who surveyed almost 6,000 religious teenagers for his book Faith Matters, told me that one common sentiment from teenagers who had taken abstinence pledges was that they felt forced to sign if the pledges were made public.
“It made some of them feel like the act of pledging wasn’t meaningful,” he told me. “If you’ve not made the pledge, the fact that you haven’t really stands out, and that’s an awful lot of pressure, especially if it’s at a ball in front of a bunch of your friends and their fathers. Many teens told us they only made pledges because of what it meant if they didn’t.” Statistics back this up: According to Daddy I Do, one in six girls pledges purity in America, and 90 percent break that vow.
These fathers all agreed that purity balls were a fun way to foster father-daughter relationships, encourage communication about an uncomfortable and confusing issue, and make their daughters feel that they’re worth more than just their bodies. But by conflating father-daughter connection with ownership, undermining the serious implications of the covenant, and linking the word “value” with a nebulous concept of “purity,” don’t fathers risk sending their daughters a message that sexuality—or abstaining from sex—defines them?
I left this same comment on spinoff post, but it applies here so I’m reposting: I grew up in this “Purity Culture.” There is a very, very dark side. The idea that “the greatest gift a bride can give her husband is her virginity” really reduces the value of a girl to what is between her legs. And then you add in the “Dad” factor and things get really weird. In the name of protecting his daughter’s purity, a dad hyper-focuses on her sexuality. All he sees when he looks at her is sex. It gets really, really messed up.… Read more »
Anything that doesnt go with what this world tells you is called weird or crazy. I wish I had something like this growing up. When I was younger my friends around me slept with people all the time. And we were only teens. I only 4 so far at that time but thats too much! My friends had way more sexual partners than me. My cousins had kids young ended up with stds. So whats wrong with telling your child to wait? What are the consequences of purity???? What .. not knowing how to have sex? Uh We know how… Read more »
Not to mention the whole “she must respond to her father’s leadership until she’s under her husband’s leadership.”
Yeah, minors should respond to their parents’ leadership, but then to her husband’s leadership? What century is this???
Just reinforces the double standard in today”s society – that girls are expected to wait and . . . boys will be boys. And some of the language sounds borderline pornographic – “cover my daughter as her father.” As long as only girls are expected to wait until marriage, there will be no boys waiting on them.
…boys will be boys….
More like boys should not be waiting if they expect to be considered men.
Wow. It’s unbelievable that parts of society still live in the stone age and think sex makes a man.
If I hadn’t lived it personally of hadn’t heard a lot of other men tell it I’d probably be inclined to believe it either.
Correction.
…..be inclined to not believe it either.
I usually would eschew the word “creepy.” But THIS is creepy.
I find if offensive that society has crap like Purity Balls for girls but nothing that parents want their boys to go to. I know society today makes it seems cool for guys to be man-whores and yes it’s in their DNA to want sex and conquest blah blah blah but they’re not cave anymore, they’ve evolved and can control themselves. Boys should also be taught the value of sex and all the same stuff girls are taught about it’s being an expression of love and how you should wait until you’re love with someone. I will never encourage my… Read more »
The best thing a man can do for his daughter is to teach his son to respect women. All this talk about keeping girls pure, who is talking to boys about respecting women outside his own family?
I’d say that teaching boys to follow their own way when it comes to relationships with women (instead of giving into what various forms of media tell them such relationships should be like) would come before what you say. If they aren’t able to be themselves and respect themselves there’s not much hope for their relationships with women. One big problem is that respect is actually being beaten into the heads of some boys to the point that I think it back fires and they react violently when things go wrong. I think the key to helping boys is to… Read more »
If fathers want to connect with their daughters, they should go outside and throw a baseball or kick a soccer ball. Also, placing emphasis on sexual purity only reinforces the idea that a girl is defined by her body, rather than taking the focus off sexuality.
Do I need a purity ball to talk with my daughter? No. But I did take her to a Father-Daughter Valentine’s Day dance at the Y years ago. Does that make me creepy? Not to me; not to her. It seems like the writer of this piece had an axe to grind before the story was written. Those aspects of the story which support her perspective are emphasized; those which are not fall into the background. She takes a presumed position of superior knowledge and sophistication which, in my view, demeans the motives and actions of both fathers and daughters… Read more »
Nothing wrong with father-daughter dances. They’re lovely. What makes them creepy *is* the purity ball aspect. You know what is great? Finding stuff that both the dad and daughter really like without having any ideological bent. You know – like talking about books, painting, cooking, building neat shit in the back yard, camping? Fun?
Wow, what incredibly bad wording on Wilson’s pledge. For a father to “cover” his daughter? “Cover” is a term for breeding livestock. Wow.
From what I have read, children who sign abstinence pledges are more likely to suffer unintended pregnancies. They feel too guilty about what they’re doing to think clearly. So they don’t consider the importance of using birth control/protection.
Wilson says that girls are just “waiting to be loved.” Well, quit making them wait. Love your kids; no gowns required.
Why can’t they have these father-daughter dances without the abstinence pledges? Then you have quality time without the creepiness.
this!
Seconded. Who doesn’t like a dinner dance? Dress up, eat something fancy, chat to other people, inevitably dance to the Proclaimers. How is that *not* a good night? And if your dad is an awesome guy who’s great to spend time with, it’s a top night out.
My dad and I bonded by going fishing and drinking beer. I think that was a far more fun, and way less creepy, way to build a relationship in my teens.
What a pity that dads who want to be men of integrity, and examples to their daughters of the kind of good men they can expect their own husbands or boyfriends to be, are being confused with this silliness. It speaks volumes that this is not an “Integrity Ball”.
It is a pity but we can take comfort in how few people really do confuse men of integrity with this conservative-Christian pap.
“The reason that a girl decides to wait sexually is because she knows her value. And this is an opportunity for the father to really hit home how valuable she is.”
She knows her value, all right. She knows her father and everyone around her think her value lies between her legs (and in her “beauty”). What a disgusting message for a dad to give a daughter. It’s possible to let girls know they have sexual agency (and sexuality) and can therefore make informed decisions about their own sex lives–which may include being abstinent. This is the opposite of that.
Well said Sarah!
Why do you need a “Purity Ball” to talk about these issues with your daughters? I have a 15 year old. Since she was 12, her mother and I have spoken with her about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. So far, she hasn’t gotten pregnant or been arrested. I’m wary of anything, church sponsored or not, that screams “LOOK AT WHAT GOOD PARENTS WE ARE”. I dance with my daughters almost every day, when they let me. I also talk to them about the music they listen to, the boys and girls they hang with, and what constitutes good… Read more »
rawk!
I’m not totally sold on these, but for fathers and daughters who have a healthy relationship, there is something to be said on the father’s part about “don’t let anybody cross your boundaries of intimacy who doesn’t love you as much as I do.”
Why, though? What if your daughter *wants* to become intimate with someone she doesn’t love? What if she fancies a one night stand, or a “friend with benefits”? OK, it’s uncomfortable to think of your little girl having a sexual appetite, later on – but that’s the _parent’s_ problem, not the daughter’s.
I have no discomfort whatsoever at the prospect of my daughter engaging in sex for its own sake. It didn’t hurt me or anyone else.
Let me answer just based on the headline, without reading: NOOOOOooooooooo! Now let me read it. …okay, that was actually a pretty great article. I think that abstinence only education, the reinforcing of the whore/madonna complex, the dichotomy between female sexual purity & male sexual conquest, male authority & female subservience, all that stuff, is deeply deeply messed up & wrong. That being said, I think having a good relationship with your daughter is a noble goal, & just because I disagree with your ideology doesn’t mean you don’t have a right to have it– I have my right to… Read more »