There’s an analogy I’ve heard many times regarding sex that seems to be pretty popular amongst Youth Leaders and parents alike. Some form of “nobody wants a cupcake that somebody else has already taken a bite out of.” Regardless of your own personal opinions on premarital sex, let me try to explain to you what a terrible, stupid thing this is to say to a young woman. Let me start out by saying that people want to have sex. And young people really want to have sex. If you are not aware of this fact, you have probably not hit puberty yet. Give it a few more years. At any rate, regardless of what you believe, or where you live, the psychological and physical desire to get busy is as persistent as the desire to eat. If that weren’t true, the species would have died out long before such conservative views of sex took hold of us.
I would now like to assert something a little more controversial. Some people will, at some point, have sex outside of marriage. Have I lost some of you? I hope not. This seems like a perfectly reasonably statement. Still, far too many people are shocked to find out that many of the girls from “good families” are having sex before they’re married (scandal!). Then all sort of explanations fly around about how dad must have been too busy at work to pay attention, or how her parents weren’t approachable enough, or how they were too strict and pushed her over the edge. Sometimes these factors might way in to her decision to have sex, but ultimately, it was her decision. There are elements in everybody’s mind that can’t be engineered to read, “Don’t have sex.” I don’t care how hard you try to teach somebody that sex is immoral, dirty, unacceptable, obligatory, or the only good thing in life, what they choose to do about it is all on them.
Now that we’ve established that people will have sex (that was a lot lengthier than expected), let me tell you what is so horribly wrong with the analogy. Women are not cupcakes. Comparing a woman to an already tasted sweet is the ultimate in objectification. Really? I couldn’t have come up with a more offensive analogy if I tried. It’s a transparent, overly fluffy way of phrasing “your vagina is the only thing I like about you, but only under certain circumstances. Having expressed how no one could ever love you without a hymen, you must marry first so you can lose your only redeeming feature in a 30 second, unsatisfying and awkward session.” Can anybody see how that’s a psychologically damaging thing to tell a vulnerable and insecure young woman? I certainly hope so.
So suppose a girl believes the whole cupcake thing, but being a human, she has sex anyway. In her mind, there’s no point in trying to find a good relationship anymore. She’s been taught that she is undeserving of a caring partner and that her worth is completely dried up. So, in a nasty little bit of irony, she seeks external validation that she still has worth. Keep in mind that she believes her worth to be entirely tied up in her sexual status. So guess how she seeks validation? Lots and lots of sex, usually with anyone who asks for it since she assumes that no one wants her anymore. It’s the result of a false dichotomy perpetrated by this analogy and conservative conceptions of sex in general: an unmarried woman is either a virgin, or a slut.
(As a side note, women are supposed to be an active part of a sexual partnership. Cupcakes are non-sentient, for the record. If you’d rather make love to a cupcake, have at it. Sweaty, messy, delicious cupcake sex. Just beware of sprinkles- those will get lodged in unspeakable places.)
So can we put an end to this, please? Who's it for, anyhow?
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