We're Still Fixated On The Myths Of Female Sexuality

As videos of harmful 'virginity testing' practices go viral, Eloise Hendy speaks to experts about why more needs to be done to end the falsehoods told about women's bodies

- Eloise Hendy

It's not every day that a second-year art school project makes headlines. But in October 2013, the press got wind of one Central Saint Martins student's plan for a new performance piece, titled Art School Stole My Virginity. Clayton Pettet’s project would, he claimed, culminate in a live event where he would have sex with a male partner for the first time, in front of an audience.

When the performance eventually rolled around the next April, however, some were left disappointed. The 120 or so people who’d bought tickets for the London event witnessed not a live deflowering”, but Pettet scrubbing words like “NSFW” and TEEN WHORE?” off his body, while a topless teenager cut off chunks of his hair. Attendees were then led downstairs to a private booth, where each person was invited to slide a banana into Pettet’s mouth a number of times.

Many were quick to dub the whole thing a gimmick, no more than an elaborate art stunt, with a number of critics suggesting that Pettet manipulated the media circus for 15 minutes of rabid tabloid fame. Yet others discerned a deeper significance behind the final performance. For if it’s virginity that’s on the table, what could be better than an event that never really existed? If Clayton Pettet’s project was “just a hype”, couldn’t the same be said for the concept of virginity itself?

Ness Cooper, a clinical sexologist and therapist, calls the concept of virginity “a cultural and social construct, and often one that’s been used to try and justify abstinence, breeding or financial worth”. Indeed, Pettet described the impetus for his project in just such terms, defining virginity as “a performance that has been used to value women; a heteronormative term constantly used to work out someone’s worth”.