Back in the ‘90s, the purity movement coupled with consumer culture spawned the rise of purity rings, which were the wearable commodification of teen abstinence pledges. Many of these silver rings were branded with the slogan, True Love Waits, which was also the name of the company that distributed them. I attended conferences where these things were handed out like candy, like the evangelical inverse of liberal colleges handing out condoms at orientation. 

I’d like to imagine a different reality, where instead of rings (typically aimed at girls, though not exclusively), True Love Weights was a line of inspirationally-monogrammed hand weights targeting young men. 

Stumbling block is a term usually applied to (depending whom you talk to) voluptuous women, or their large breasts. Men, those fragile creatures, are highly influenced by appearances [“men are visual creatures”] and responsibility therefore falls to the women to keep men from being led astray.

The discourse around ‘stumbling blocks’ exemplifies how purity culture is just a more modest version of rape culture. The underlying assumption of both frameworks is that men are hyper sexualized beings with little capacity for self-regulation.

This is, folks, the vision that started it all, and I’ve been giggling to myself about this for weeks. Purity culture taught me that men are visual creatures. This meant: visual appearance matters more to men. This justified stringent modesty rules for girls on youth group trips (also, see above re: stumbling blocks), while the guys were free to peel off their shirts and frolick around on the beach. Men—and their wandering eyes—were something to avoid. 

I thought Halloween was a fitting season for these cards, because purity culture’s emphasis on abstinence and the commodification of women’s bodies has generated a host of ghouls, goblins, enemies, and villains, many of which live inside of us.  

How has purity culture alienated you from your body? And how are you reclaiming pleasure and embodiment?