I am a tattoo in the hillside.

Natalie Dylan, San Diego native, college student, virign, is selling her deflowerment. So far she’s got a 3.7  million dollar vagina.

Dylan – her pseudonym – claims she needs the money for grad school. The Bunny Ranch in Nevada (where prostitution is legal) is brokering the deal. Her virginity has been up for sale since September 2008. (Why she is using a pseudonym when her picture and hometown – tools it would seem any determined net surfer could use to find her real name – is a mystery).

The plight of Dylan’s viriginty has Americans and the media eagerly tossing out labels: this is a stunt, ingenious, entrepreneurially ballsy, degrading, illegal.

On January 23, 2009 Dylan spoke out through a letter published by the Daily Beast. Essentially Dylan asserts that this is a social experiment. Womens studies classes and college professors got her thinking that virginity is another concept invented by a patriarichal society to keep women in their place. Here is an excerpt:

Like most little girls, I was raised to believe that virginity is a sacred gift a woman should reserve for just the right man. But college taught me that this concept is just a tool to keep the status quo intact. Deflowering is historically oppressive—early European marriages began with a dowry, in which a father would sell his virginal daughter to the man whose family could offer the most agricultural wealth. Dads were basically their daughters’ pimps.

When I learned this, it became apparent to me that idealized virginity is just a tool to keep women in their place. But then I realized something else: if virginity is considered that valuable, what’s to stop me from benefiting from that? It is mine, after all. And the value of my chastity is one level on which men cannot compete with me. I decided to flip the equation, and turn my virginity into something that allows me to gain power and opportunity from men. I took the ancient notion that a woman’s virginity is priceless and used it as a vehicle for capitalism.

Are you rolling your eyes? I knew this experiment would bring me condemnation. But I’m not saying every forward-thinking person has to agree with what I’m doing. You should develop your own personal belief system—that’s exactly my point! For me, valuing virginity as sacred is simply not a concept I could embrace. But valuing virginity monetarily—now that’s a concept I could definitely get behind. I no longer view the selling of sex as wrong or immoral—my time at college showed me that I had too blindly accepted such arbitrary norms. And for what it’s worth, the winning bid won’t necessarily be the highest—I get to choose.

This brings two points to mind: how do you define virginity? is she misguided or a cool capitalist?

Georgia Okeefe.

Natalie Dylan’s vagina will do what it wants and you cant stop it.

I am pro-choice for the same reason I don’t believe prostitution should be illegal: every person has a right to their own body. In this case, the only person that has a say over Dylan’s virginity is herself (which she makes clear by saying she – rather than price – will choose the winner). Prostitution is a complicated transaction. And yet it is also capitalist. If flesh is your most valuable capital the opporunity cost of personal degredation is perhaps less than the opportunity cost of a “real” job.

If Dylan wants to fund her education this way – and she is firmly behind this mental and emotional decision – I won’t call the FBI as some have done to have her stopped. Why should you care about her virginity? Dylan’s vagina is Dylan’s vagina. Not yours, America’s, God’s, or mine.

What exactly is virginity?

The standard knee-jerk definition is the first act of intercourse. 

But this is a blind definition. Concretely it excludes homosexuality. I’m sure any sexually active gay person will dispute the fact that by this definition they are virgins.

Abstractly, some view virginity as something to give, a give of flesh and mind. Those who lost their virginity to rape might see themselves as virgins until they have consensual sex for the first time. Virginity is spiritual, mental.

The best way to holster the concept of virginity that I have come across and agreed with is: when one has an orgasm (or experiences sexual pleasure) at the hands of their first lover. 

A more liberal thought expands this to a new virginity with each new lover.

In other news: Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse premieres tonight. Watch it.

Dear heavenly father Joss.

Please let your newest child prevail and your followers grow in numbers.

Amen. 

A comic scribbled during Yet Another Cultural Anthropology Lecture (and redrawn in paint because I don’t have a scanner):