Seriously, I have nothing against virgins. If you want to keep your virginity until you die, go for it. More power to you. But I am fucking tired, tired, tired (yes I thought if I said tired more than once, y’all would know just how tired I really was) of finding the heroines in my books being virgins in their twenties. And not only are they twenty-something virgins, they are twenty-something lawyer, doctor, scientist, CEO, etc. ad nauseum virgins. Really?
I don’t need a lot of realism in my books. They are fiction for a reason. I can put up with the too stupid to live women. I can put up with the too perfect to have ever lived men. I can put up with plot device after plot device with a little of deus ax machina thrown in. But I cannot nor will I ever be able to swallow a 26 year virgin medical doctor. EVER.
Look, if you were home-schooled on an island where there were only other women, I might buy that you could be a virgin into your late teens/early twenties. But then you are so fucked up on so many other levels that really the whole virgin thing is the LEAST of your problems. To have heroine after heroine show up in books today as opposed to be re-released from back in the eighties, as virgins well into their careers stretches the truth, my imagination and any modicum of common sense as to be beyond fiction all the way to la-la land. And yeah, maybe aliens will pick you up as they blow by our solar system, not to mention that swamp land I have to sell you.
The average age that an American women loses their virginity is 17.3 years old. Let’s try to reflect that in the fiction section. Cause even fiction should have a little veracity thrown in. In other words, just cause the STORY is a fairy tale doesn’t mean that the world that you draw upon in the story should all be lies as well. Plus, it places a premium on female virginity that I just find fucking offensive. Christ, that is just so regency period. Medieval in fact. I could probably wax poetic about all these older female virgins finding the man of their dreams who just happen to be their soul-mates being about the writer’s hang ups, being a reflection of a patriarchal society and several other sociological/psychological issues but I won’t. It would be BORING. Almost as boring as reading about fucking late twenty-something virgins.
So just stop it already. Just say no. And quit giving me female protagonists who don’t reflect the reality of being a women in America today.
