They'll Tell You To Your Face: Virginity Is Cool

Virgins. They aren't just in the Bible anymore.

No, they are in the malls, in our high schools, on television and - in at least one city - plastered on billboards.

You may not have met them yet, but you will. Militant virgins. They are in-your-face abstainers of the 1990s. They practice chastity with an attitude. Their slogan could be: Pure and proud.

Don't get the idea that teenage virginity has swept the nation. This is a trend that is oozing its way through the country. Slowly but apparently deliberately, teenage virgins are coming out of the closet to prove that abstinence is no longer just for nerds.

`WILLING TO WAIT'

They have celebrity virgins as role models. Former L.A. Lakers basketball star A.C. Green, now with the Phoenix Suns, was on the cover of the June issue of the conservative Focus on the Family magazine underneath a headline that said: "Willing to Wait."

In the story, Green, 29, explains that he is still a virgin, and has a girlfriend who "shares the same values and goals."

On television, characters on programs popular with young people are vocal virgins.

Take, for example, Donna from "Beverly Hills, 90210," played by Tori Spelling. Donna is still a virgin, even though she has entered college and is sharing an apartment with her boyfriend.

And the character of J.T. on the show "Step by Step," played by teenage hunk Brandon Call, was also a vocal virgin during an episode of the show last season.

Of course, there have always been some real-life teenage virgins out there. But statistics show that they certainly haven't been in the majority - by age 19, national health statistics say, 75 percent of young women and 86 percent of young men have had sex.

And, let's face it, being a virgin hasn't exactly been cool among the young since Woodstock, free love and the invention of MTV.

But this is a new generation. To today's young people, Woodstock might as well be a synonym for "extra firewood," and free love comes with free deadly diseases.

"Five years ago, if you were a virgin, you wouldn't tell anybody, you'd try to play it off like you had done it and all. But now, people at school are openly saying, `I'm a virgin,' and their friends are saying, `That's cool,' " said Ivory Khalid, a student at the Lamberton School in Philadelphia.

Khalid, 17, says she is a virgin. And she's proud of it. She's not particularly conservative, nor is she a religious zealot. She's cool, and popular. And she's had boyfriends.

"They just have to respect my decision," she said of her dates. "I don't want to be used and abused. I'm proud of my choice."

THE RISKS OF CASUAL SEX

Khalid is one of two dozen teenage peer educators at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Her job, along with the other peer educators, is to come up with ways to carry the message to other teens of the risks of casual sex, AIDS and the social acceptance of virginity.

The group this year plans to travel to schools and community centers in the city and present skits about how to say no to sex.

"People are beginning to see that virginity is important," said Patricia Bason, 21, a high-school graduate and one of the oldest peer educators. "(Teens) are keeping their virginity because of diseases and just because people are feeling different these days about having sex so young."

Bason said she has entered "a secondary virginity," a notion that has become popular in the new-virginity movement. Secondary virginity allows people who have had sex to declare themselves once again sexually pure, erasing experience from their carnal slate.

Peer educator Ronald Dukes, 17, a freshman at Community College of Philadelphia, said the idea of saving oneself for marriage was often a hard sell, especially to boys. But, he said, if the peer educators can get boys and girls to at least postpone sexual activity for a few years, they feel the message has been successful.

"Boys don't go for it all the time," said Dukes, "but after you go over all the consequences of sex, sometimes they say, `Yeah, maybe I'll wait.' "

Government officials have even jumped on the vestal bandwagon.

The state of Maryland has made sexual abstinence a governmental concern, partially funding an ad campaign promoting virginity.

Billboards in Baltimore show the word "virgin" scrawled on a white wall in pink spray paint. Underneath is the slogan: "Teach your kids it's not a dirty word."

Hal Donofrio is the executive director of Maryland's Campaign for Our Children, and his advertising firm created the billboards.

He said the campaign, which includes TV ads, radio spots and a middle-school curriculum, is an attempt to reach young people before they are sexually active and to decrease teen pregnancy.