A beat up library copy is usually a pretty good sign.  The paperback edition of Pure that I checked out has clearly been dragged around a good bit, despite only being in the library collection since 2010.  That was enough to override my fear that a book with an ad for Lipsmacker Lounge in its endpages would almost definitely act like my friend so it could sit near enough to copy off my examen d’etudes sociales and then make me leave my own desk at lunch so it could sit with its real friends.

I used to work at an educational toy store, which means that generally speaking, we only sold things like dolls if they came with things like books.  This store was run out of a refurbished garage in a part of town that didn’t see a lot of foot traffic, which means that it was often slow.  This is all to say that I have read a number of the Groovy Girls books, as well as the ones that go with these pseudo-Barbies that are supposed to represent better values or something, or at least somewhat more realistic proportions (but no fatties).  Pure is not like a book about the cookie-baking-horseback-riding-student-council-election adventures of animate inanimates, but it did have to go through the same door in my brain: the books-about-girly-girls-and-their-girly-girl-girlfriends entrance.  When something comes through that door, I have a certain pre-understanding: I will not have any idea whether this book is reflecting reality or not.  I do not have the real world experience to back up my opinions.  Pure definitely takes place within a distinct kind of girl-culture, but as an outside reader, I felt invited into that world, rather than alienated from it.

There are two equally nauseating tendencies in representing groups of young women: either they’re all super bitchy and backstabby and it’s like ‘whoa why is anybody ever friends with girls because it’s clearly only ever horrible’, or whatever problems they have turn out to be totally insignificant because lalala faux-sisterhood makes everything awesome.  Pure does a pretty good job of avoiding either extreme — which is important, because the book is actually far more about the ins and outs of platonic girlfriendship than it is about any of the things you might expect a book about purity rings to fixate on (eg – boyfriends, sex, evangelism).

In this way, Pure does present a somewhat positive perspective on the purity ring phenomenon.  Mainstream culture often sees the proliferation of rings on the hands of adolescent stars as a creepy way of bringing up the subject of their sexiness by making it forbidden and therefore not pedophilic and therefore totally pedophilic, and the practice of fathers being the guardians of their daughters’ sexuality as a particularly gross way of having old fashioned family values.  These views aren’t necessarily wrong (or at least, I still kinda agree with both of them), but as might be expected, they gloss over the complex individual reasons people choose to wear the rings.  Pure doesn’t shy away from looking at the pitfalls of patriarchal ownership of female sexuality (although it’s equally unafraid to show us a female character who’s perfectly content to have her father as the self-appointed figurehead of her innocence), but for several of the girls in the book, that isn’t what the ring represents at all.  The protagonist, Tabitha, had her ring presented to her by her best friend, making it a symbol not just of virginity, but of their promise to hold each other above their relationships with boys.  Another friend considers her ring a promise to herself, not just to keep boys out of her pants, but to focus on her future and not become distracted.  And of course, there’s one girl who seems to be doing it just because everybody else is.

Personally, one of the things that’s always ooked me out the most about virginity pledges of any kind is the heaviness of telling people, especially children, that their self-worth depends on their successful avoidance of sex until marriage — which is kind of an arbitrary marker.  I recognise that this makes religious sense to a lot of people, but even so, it’s not like marriage is something that most middle or high school students can, with any accuracy, pinpoint on a timeline of their life.  It’s also one of those concepts that’s so insanely complex that our feelings about it can and should change a whole bunch over the course of a lifetime.  When I was twelve, I really hadn’t processed the idea that marriage was a situation that might eventually apply to me personally.  When I was sixteen, I idealised marriage (or at least long-term companionship and fidelity) and was outraged when people I knew even tangentially failed in their commitments to one another — but I had still never had a serious romantic partner.  When I was nineteen I was (sort of) proposed to, and rejected the idea out of hand.  Now, at twenty-five, a number of my peers have gotten married (and many more are living in marriage-esque arrangements, where their lives are almost inextricably intertwined with a partner and it is pretty much assumed that they are going to remain like that for the forseeable future), and it is still a huge question mark for me.  All of which is to say that while I completely respect young people’s right to make decisions about their policies regarding their interactions with other humans, and even to formalise and declare those policies however they see fit, I think it’s kind of screwy and damaging for adults to impose the idea of making a vow about something that we all know is an ongoing process of figuring yourself out (not to mention another person who you presumably DO NOT EVEN KNOW YET).  Like, either you make this vow and stick to it or you’re awash in the vastness of the big sexed up world without a personal flotation device?  UNKIND.  Also not, like, truthful.  I thought Pure did a good job of addressing how peoples’ relationship to the idea of purity changes over time.  We are given to understand not that the girl who stops wearing her ring stops believing, but that she honestly comes to a point where the thing that is most in line with her values happens to be in direct opposition to the thing she pledged when she was twelve years old.

I also really appreciated that the book portrays Christianity as a diverse spectrum of believers — although I did find it a little bit curious that there was a bit of an all-or-nothing attitude towards sexual activity.  Like, apparently it goes from kissing (which is okay but a slippery slope) straight into THE DEED.  Which it, um, doesn’t, usually, in real life, right?  I think part of the reason for this might be that the book is narrated by Tabitha, who is just starting to dabble in the kissing part with her new boyfriend, Jake.  I feel like there’s some untold complexity on the subject for Cara (who has been with her boyfriend for over a year).  I’d also be interested to hear from her about what it’s like navigating a sexual relationship after abstinence-only education.  I’d say it’s a fair omission, given what McVoy chose as the focus and trajectory of the novel (sex is more of an incidental circumstance that allows the events to play out), but it is an omission that anybody with an interest in the status of sex education programs is going to notice.

A quote from the author’s website:

When I first got the idea for Pure, I was working as an editorial assistant in New York, and reading a lot of YA fiction. Almost everything I read left me thinking, “Hmmm… this really wasn’t at all like my own high school experience.” Though my friends and I never had extreme fantasy lives (or extremely traumatic problems), the everyday stuff was definitely dramatic enough. So I decided to try to write something myself: something that captured the whirlwind rollercoaster of “normal,” and that focused on the deliciously horrible time in life when, for the first time, you’re making choices that separate you from your friends, your parents, your teachers and mentors—when you begin defining yourself as an individual.

I’m going to go ahead and say that I got kind of tired of the more mundane problems in the book by the latter pages — but to come full circle, that might be because I don’t know enough about the concerns of teenage girls.  (Teenage girls, what say you?)  Overall, though, McVoy has successfully drawn a novel’s-worth of things to care about out of a thoroughly realistic situation.  So yay.

More Life,
Emmet

P.S. – It’s possible I have personal issues with Lipsmackers that I need to sort out.  Is it weird that I still catch myself gazing at those sparkly tubes with the longing-repulsion of a sixth grader who half-believes that she is just a chapstick collection away from the love and acceptance of her peers?

P.P.S. – This is the article which provided the inspiration for Pure, in case you’re interested.

P.P.P.S. – Um, weirdest form of humanitarianism ever?

P.P.P.P.S. – There’s a thing that happens in this book that also happens in an episode of This American Life!