After reading a scene in which the heroine was a surprise virgin (Surprise! Virgin!) I tweeted about how tired I was of the Surprise Virgin afterglow conversations.
Picture it. The hero figures out the heroine is a virgin because he encounters some resistance (which, don't even get me started) and she flinches and of course he Is Very Alarmed and tries to stop but she tells him not to so it's ok for him to get on with it.
Then after they've crested and reached peaks of joy and done the dance as old as time, he says something about how if he'd known she was a virgin, he'd have done it all differently, been more gentle or something.
First, why would you not bring your A game the first time you sleep with a woman you have major lust pants for? If you groin is on fire and it's not because of Gold Bond, why would you not do your very best scrumpin? What is this “I'd have been more gentle and sensitive” crap?
Second, he knew she was a virgin as soon as he encountered her gasp upon his plunge (and can we stop with the “to the hilt” nonsense? I get it, he could… go… all… the … way. But enough with the hilt). He had plenty of time to gentle it up but no, he was overcome with lust, and pounded away like a poundy thing, and it's her fault for not telling him she was a virgin before he plunged his hilt.
So I vented about it on Twitter, and this began a very rapid discussion, which I believe sets up a list of requests for future virgin sex scene cliche avoiding.
First, the OMG U WERE VIRGIN DAMN MY HARDON scenes have to go. Enough with the 'You were a virgin? I'd have done it differently….” Why? This is why:
And then there was this response:
Yes. Yes it should
The ubiquity of this type of scene begs a few more questions. For one thing, what WOULD he have done differently? Brought flowers and some wine to her hymen?
And how does he know? Sometimes he feels it. COME ON.
Do we need to go over the location of the hymen again?
Another question:
What does the differently mean? Seriously. Why would virgins want something that was more of a performance than a genuine physical expression? It's not like virgins get interpretive dance sex… do they!?
Another question:
Yes. That too. How is it that sex is something HE does until she begs for it and then it's ok to pop her cherry in retrospect? ARGH. How is it that both people are consenting adults but he's the one what's “doing” things, and would therefore “do” them differently?
Are virgins never on top?
Then there's the reverse:
I don't think that's ok, either, but at least some difference is progress, right?
There are other scenes we are tired of, too. Kate Johnson brought up another corollary to the OMG U WERE VIRGIN? cliche scene:
YES. How is it that there are all these virginal heroines running around and everyone knows, remarks on said virgin status, and it's common knowledge among so many? WTF?
Even if I did know about someone being a virgin I can't think of any circumstance in which I'd bring it up. It's not like it's first-thing-in-the-elevator conversation each morning: “So, how's your hymen today? Still there?”
And speaking of virgins, they have their own collection of cliche scenes, including this one:
Yeah, I'm over that cliche, too. Enough of the virgin Havisham who is going to dine on the memory of her deflowering until she's old, dusty and decrepit. For never shall she meet another wang interested in her moldy wedding cake.
So, to sum up, Virginity Cliches are tiresome. I'd be happy to not read any of these again.
Oh – and this one, too:
YES.
Remember, people. Chaste is only two letters away from “chafe.”
In Vision of heat (Psy-changeling 3) by Nalini Singh, the virgin heroine is actually on top :p
Personally? I would buy a book (and buy copies for all my friends) where they flip the cliche and he’s the virgin and she’s like “oh I would have totally done this different if I’d have known.”
::snork:: That would totally rock.
Ah heck, ladies, all the hero’s excuses for not knowing/not thinking she’s a virgin will never top my real life experience. My first gynecologist thought I was lying about being a virgin simply because I was 18 years old! Nevermind I live in Southern California, went to a school in Newport Beach, and was (and still am) fat, and fat chicks just do not get dates, especially in high school, in a looks obsessed area like that. Nope. He was positive I was a dirty little liar. Rolls his eyes and snorted and everything. Nope, I was 18 so obviously I was a whore who slept with the entire football team and just lying because mommy was there in the office with me.
I can still see how the blood drained from his face and his eyes widened in shock when he went to do my pap smear and encountered my never penetrated even by a tampon hymen.
So the hero saying “If I knew you were a virgin” thing doesn’t bug me at all.
Find me a “You’re not a virgin – OH MY GOD YOU ARE!” cliche that tops that. I totally dare you.
Going to be late for my dental appointment here. Got to quit reading and ROFLAMO. I read a book a while back about a man who was a virgin and the woman was a former mistress who was 42 yrs. old. A much different view about the virgin “deflowering” biz. BTW, is it deflowering when the man looses his virginity? Maybe it should be called dewoodying, or unstiffing, or exmanhooding. Thought provoking…hmmmmm
I think I just DIED laughing for a full minute there. Seriously, my heart stopped.
NOTE: I did work with a “I’m waiting til I’m married” girl. Nothing against that, but wow, everyone knew it. People wanted after the wedding night updates from her! It’s a hymen for chrissakes, not Pandora’s Box!
Man I wish I’d been here at the beginning! I’m laughing, but I’m the last one in on the joke. Sigh. Damn job.
So, and I know this dates me, the books “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex”, “The Sensuous Man” and “The Sensous Woman” were published at a timely point in my life. It being the 70’s the young couples I babysat for would leave these little treasure troves of information out on the coffee table so the whole multiorgasmic, multiple go rounds, mild twinge haven’t worked for me EVER. A little knowlege is a helpful thing.
@ jami joanne russell, Yeah I suppose that’s true in this day and age. I was thinking back to the 70’s, when I was forcibly (and painfully) deflowered at my first gyn exam because my mom’s ob-gyn did not believe that an 18-year-old could possibly still be a virgin. (He believed me after I passed out on the table.) The whole Sexual Revolution thing kinda went down the toilet when AIDS made the scene.
I personally held back until I was almost thirty, not so much because of the pain or the threat of STDs but because of the threat of pregnancy. After seeing friends and relations get pregnant in high school and end up working at Wal-Mart, I was not about to sacrifice my life until I had experienced everything I wanted to do and established my own sense of personhood.
Jami, is this the book you were thinking of? http://www.amazon.com/Rabbi-No…
I think we need heroes who “know what they’re doing” because so few men in RL do. I mean, most guys seem to take their sex tips from porn, which is all about the “poundy-poundy = bliss for her”. Wake up, guys. Foreplay—and lots of it—is your friend and ours. Just sayin’. I’ve only been with one guy (when I was 25) and it was horrible. Not just the first time, but every time after that. It was so bad that even the thought of having sex is repulsive to me.
oh, don’t make me start on virgins and multiple orgasms and how it never hurts after first move *rolling my eyes* What this scenes do is create unrealistic expectations. Then you get a virgin who is determined to wait for the pain to go away in seconds and who feels inadequate if she didn’t orgasm the first time. ugh.
My first time hurt so much, people, that I flipped him in his back and had my way controlling everything we did from the top. I just can’t imagine me being able to go through it otherwise.
Also men always get surprised if you were a virgin and didn’t orgasm from them pounding away 🙂 are they secretly reading the same romances we do?
I probably can count realistic deflowering scenes in romance genre on the fingers of one hand, they are so rare.
Another thing that needs to go is the “virgins bleed like stuck pigs” misconception. When you’re with a man for the first time and after the (disappointing) deed is done, he asks you on several occasions why you didn’t bleed, implying that you were lying about being a virgin and are actually a slutty chick who has been with a bunch of men. Because, you know, you can’t be 25 and a virgin. -.-
@ Moonbeam—Another one here, met and married Mr OMG-that’s-what-I-was-missing at 38, after more than a decade of cobwebs in the nether regions and general ‘not gonna happen’ness. It can totally happen. And hugs to you. BTDT.
Thankfully it hasn’t happened in awhile, but there was a time (waaay back, like the 80’s) when I was getting tired of the “Oops, I lost my virginity” storylines I kept running into. The young, innocent heroine was with the (usually drunk, maybe sick and out of his head) hero, trying to help him out, the next page it was like “How did I end up naked in this bed, with this man on top of me? What’s happening to me? Oooooo!” Nevermind that the guy, whether drunk or feverish, really wouldn’t have been physically able to do anything, I was just fed up with the stupidity of the virgin heroines.
Years of watching the CW have taught me that the correct way to make love to a virgin is to surround the bed with two hundred lit candles. Although a modern girl will probably provide her own candles.
I look at scenes like that and think, ‘Isn’t it warm? That must smell horrible. Hope no one catches their hair on fire.’
That was “To Seduce A Sinner”, my absolute favorite of her books.
More virginity cliches, especially in the HRs:
1. The hero doesn’t notice or believe she’s a virgin, and then sees the blood on the sheet in the morning.
2. There is no blood on the sheet for whatever reason, and he has to cut himself to drip some on the sheets to prove he deflowered her.
Kept my cool right up until this!~ O_o
I wrote one: “Uh, Jenny. There’s a blah blah blah.” And she says, “But I use tampons.” I guess you’d have to read it in context. She insisted he “press onward”, so to speak, and freaked when she saw all the blood.
ECS – You had the same experience as me! I don’t suppose you grew up in Southern California and went to a GYN in Newport Beach, did you? Because like I said, the first one I went to did not believe I was a virgin either simply because I was 18. Until he did the pap smear. Ow!
Yes Heather, that’s it! There’s something about a man willing to do something to help someone he cares about, even if it’s something he feels is icky, that is incredibly sexy. So I love how that scene where he holds her stomach because her cramps are so bad that all she wants to do is curl up in a ball all day.
what book is that?
LOL! guys and ladies i enjoy this theme and I can you why in one word ASSumptions. I enjoy reading a book ( most of the time that has these cliche) . I can tell Lynne graham, Diana palmer, sandra brown( try best kept secrets) have this theme down pact. I like the face that the h may seem a little slutty or she may be outof norm ( like a goth)and still be a virgin. I like the fact the Hero makes a complete A*** of him self and of course feels guilt. You know that should teach us not to judge a person by the way they present them selves to the world. We really dont know the hidden depths of person or why present a bad or untrue version of them selves.
( I am card carrying member of the v club too)
Speaking of the awful or uncomfortable stories of loss of virginity I think a good book to read is Welcome to Temptation because there is scene between Sophie, her sister and Zeda(?) that talks about that. ( LOL)
@kkw I think read that book.
Well, I lost mine to a bike accident. It hurt like blazes, I was riding a boy’s bike about 3 inches too tall for me, and I got hit by a car, sideswiped another car, then rode the damned thing up the stairs to the post office, where I went through the screen door. I was lucky to end up only very badly bruised, with some seriously bloody undies.
I never particularly regarded being a virgin as a point of honor, either.
For that matter, I am also pretty passionately in love with a man 20 years my junior, and we have a LOT in common; more than I ever did with my now-ex husband who was my age.
I’m not saying it can’t happen. But I have more in common with men older than me then guys my own age and younger guys freaking annoy the crap out of me. And I just don’t get why some romance novels will have two side characters of a male vampire who looks 30 but is 300+ years old falling in love with a 60 year old human female, but they never have a female vampire who’s 500 or thereabouts falling for a 60 or even 90 year old human male. She always falls for a 20 to 35 year old human male. Doesn’t seem right. Vampire blood can restore vitality and sex drive. And a mental & emotional connection is far more important than looks anyway.
So why not? Why not a female vampire who’s been around since the dark ages but looks 25 getting the hots for some 80 year old Tony Bennett-like dude and having to chase and convince him that it’s okay? She’s really the one robbing the cradle, not him. Be a nice change of pace.
As a 21 year old virgin myself (and who plans to remain that way for quite a while) I still find all these virgin cliches to be so over the top and stupid. Like, honestly, who is going to think that virginal sex will leave you screaming for more and having multiple orgasms. Do the authors not realize that girls now a days are more than knowledgeable about sex? Also, don’t you just hate it when the girls who have had sex before are considered ‘sluts’ and are not worthy of the hero? Does a man get the virgin trophy wife after proving himself to be a true hero???
Something else that’s always bothered me in these scenes: he always pushes in a bit first, even pokes thrusts around a bit – emphasis on the feelings of being “inside her warmth” or whatever – before encountering “resistance.” How deep is this thing supposed to be, exactly?
According to the hymen myths linked above, it’s 1-2 cm in. That must be an amazing 1-2 cm!
I’m a tad conflicted on the pain vs. pleasure part though. I’m willing to accept the idea of pleasure despite the pain, because that’s been my experience. I’m someone who either never had a hymen, misplaced it somewhere along the line, or has a very confused one. I never went through the actual breaking of anything, but sex has always been damned painful. My ex and I went at it like rabbits anyway and somehow it always seemed worth the effort in the heat of the moment. But afterwards? Eh. Next night? Worth it again. Hormones make me stupid! 😛
You reminded me of one of a memorable example of this cliche—the hero has amnesia, and the heroine (who only just met him) tells him they’re husband and wife, in order to ward off an unwanted suitor, or some other deeply silly and unethical reason. Anyway, she intends to keep things chaste until she can tell him the truth, but they’re attracted, things get frisky, but then the hero is like “Wait, if we’ve been married for a year, how come you’re still a virgin?”
Awkward for so many reasons.
I get the feeling, from this thread, that part of the problem is how different people’s experiences are. I, er, had a good time—yeah, there was some pain, but nothing terrible, certainly nothing approaching getting a wax, and it was fun anyhow. So the oh-God-ow scenes always made me roll my eyes.
Whereas with someone who didn’t enjoy her first time…yeah.
Here’s another example of the amazing geography of the vagina: In Lisa Valdez’s “Passion”, the hero encounters a mid-vagina sphincter EVERY TIME. Cannot imagine what that author must have experienced to come to that conclusion!
I am crossing my legs. OMG. That makes me feel pain just reading it. I am whimpering.
LOL I loathe the virgin heroine. I got an erotica breed series book, not what I was really looking for, but whatever, and every single female was a virgin and maybe all of 21 or 23 years old. Of course all the men had chests the size of Wyoming and had as much sexual experience as the top call girl at the Mustang Ranch. When the “deflowering” would happen, the girls would weep/cry with passion and sob as each one of them said they would have been gentler, kinder, sweeter and why had she not said anything. Then the multiple times and orgasms occurred. Lucky for me I have read other romances but if this was my first crack at it, I would be turned off to the genre completely.
Actually, I have the opposite opinion. I desperately want to find a *realistic* adult virgin in a contemporary. Not one who’s been traumatized. Just one who hasn’t met the guy yet. I have issues with the book as a whole (including the idiot hero’s “Oh, but you’re a virgin and I’ll ruin you!” nonsense), but one of Nora Roberts’s very early books actually has such a heroine. She’s a virgin, and then she decides not to be, and it’s all good.
The fact is that adult virgins do exist, and goddamn do I get tired of being made to feel like a freak because I’ve never met anyone I wanted to sleep with.
Well, it’s sort of inside. I mean, it’s not like Saran Wrap over the labia. …I will never look at Saran Wrap the same way again.
There needs to be room for both. Fetishizing virginity is gross, but making inexperienced women out to be “wrong” or unattractive is also gross. I have enough problems without worrying that I’m a gigantic freak because I’m inexperienced.
Thanks for this comment!
Nearly all of my friends know I’m a virgin. I talk about it quasi-openly here (though obviously my name isn’t snarkhunter in real life!). Why should I be ashamed of it? ::sigh::
Ah, yes. Yet another TLC show that might as well be called “Look at the Freaks!!”
We need to form a club. 😀