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Attention, T.I.: There’s No Such Thing as Virginity
The rapper’s comments about his daughter’s hymen show that America is still obsessed over a purity standard that’s totally imaginary
This week, rapper T.I. admitted on a podcast that he takes his 18-year-old daughter to get an annual “hymen check.” On Ladies Like Us, he told the hosts about bringing his daughter to the gynecologist every year, making her sign away her medical privacy, and ignoring the doctor’s advice about not fixating on the hymen as an absolute indicator of virginity. (Not all women have hymens, hymens can break from athletic activity, and sometimes they don’t break at all.)
“So I say, ‘Look, Doc, she don’t ride no horses, she don’t ride no bike, she don’t play no sports. Just check the hymen, please, and give me back my results expeditiously,’” T.I. said.
This feels as good a time as any to remind Americans of an important fact: There is no such thing as virginity. Seriously.
There is no medical definition of virginity, there is no physical marker on men or women’s bodies that demonstrate virginity (not even hymens), and sex means something a lot broader than heterosexual intercourse. People are sexually intimate in all sorts of ways, and…
