According to a National Center for Health Statistics report published in 2011 by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about 70 to 75 percent of students (depending on gender) have had heterosexual intercourse by the time they reach college age (about 18 or 19). To use a statistic that’s less heterocentric and slightly closer to home, Harvard’s survey of the class of 2017 found that 65 percent were virgins before matriculating, and their 2013 senior survey showed that 30 percent of students were virgins by graduation.
While Bowdoin is definitely a sexier place than Harvard—just look at our attractiveness rankings on College Prowler—that still means that the majority of the first year class hasn’t had sex, and that many people go through college without doing so. So why is being a college virgin so frustrating?
If you came here devirginized, you might not know what I’m talking about. But others among you might understand: it can be really difficult to be a virgin in college.
In many high schools, it’s the norm not to have sex. Some people do, but often the assumption is that most people are virgins. College is in most cases the complete opposite. There are no parents; no one cares if you sneak out of your dorm for an illicit meet up. You’re surrounded by fit guys and girls all your age, bubbling over with hormones. Most pressing of all, it seems like everyone else is doing it.
All of this can make for a far more sexual environment than high school, and it often might seem like the only options are staying completely celibate for four years or simply getting it over with and having sex, whether you’re ready or not.
The media’s all for it: there are whole movies written about the quest to lose the “virgin” label (I’m looking at you, “Superbad”), often before high school graduation (you too, “American Pie”), as though that will make or break your image. The idea that no one is a virgin in college seeps into our subconscious, and turns being a virgin into something we feel we should hide.
As the statistics show, pop culture lies, but it’s very good at making those lies stick. Though we at Bowdoin feel we’re above tropes and norms in mass media, there’s still a stark dichotomy here of the haves and the have-nots of sexcapades.
Virginity isn’t explicitly stigmatized, but our focus on sex as the be-all-end-all of our carnal relations can make it very difficult for those who haven’t done it—whether it’s because they want to wait until marriage, they personally don’t feel ready, or any other reason—to participate in the Bowdoin social scene, let alone hook up with anyone. Furthermore, this cultural expectation that everyone sees sex as the final frontier minimizes the importance of other sexual activities.
I personally never had any issues with coming into college as a virgin. It did get frustrating at times, but for the most part, I spent my long and illustrious (three month) career of avoiding lower body contact by seductively whispering, “nothing’s really going to happen tonight” in boys’ ears as we left grimy social house parties. I felt minimal guilt about any blue balls I may have left in my wake. In fact, I was often able to use my v-card as a get-out-of-jail-free card to explain to guys why I wasn’t keen on going further.
While I was never shy about it, I have many friends who were terrified to admit their virginal status, as though it would make people see them differently. To them, virginity was—and, in some cases, is—a source of stress, something they just wanted to be done with.
Often, it can seem like none of your sexual history matters unless you’ve gotten to that point, which is a silly amount of pressure to put on an experience that, to be honest, might last less than five minutes.
My experience was a bit longer, but mostly because we struggled a lot with the logistics of it. Full disclosure: it actually took another night of trying before we figured it out. The excessive effort involved made me glad I was having that embarrassing moment with someone I really wanted to get naked with, rather than someone I was doing just to ditch the virgin label.
Mostly because it would have been super awkward to fumble around like that and then not see each other again, but also because if I’d only been in it for the story, I might not have stuck it out that next night.
It’s actually more likely I would have convinced myself sex was just a physical impossibility and quit the sexual realm forever because that is how I deal with things. Luckily it didn’t go down that way and I am happily going down…other roads. But that’s a story for another time.
This represents the opinion of an anonymous female sophomore.