The Occasional Observer

Most of you have probably seen the link on Drudge to the story of Natalie Dylan, the 22 year old student who is selling her virginity on EBay (and willing to take a gynecological exam to prove the purity of the product). Drudge reported that the bidding has gone up to $3.7 Million.

This is clearly becoming more than a freak exercise. With those kinds of dollars on the table, expect repeat performances, whether there are criminal charges or not.

The effects of this are going to be interesting indeed. On the one hand, this is straight up prostitution. It cheapens the marital act to mere commerce, damages the participants, and creates scandal (I'm using the word here in its traditional sense). It also further skews our value set, in a society that already tends to value appearance over the content of one's character.

On the other hand, as AmSpec's Robert Stacy McCain points out in his post at TakiMag, in our cynical age one "can well imagine the envy Miss Dylan’s auction must inspire in so many of her peers, who as teenagers parted with the same surprisingly valuable commodity for no more than the price of a few wine coolers."

Put another way, as Jason Smee commented at AmSpecBlog, "if a bunch of horny old men bid up the value of virginity (assuming an older virgin is worth more-scarcity, or at least she has to be 18 to call upon her services), this might be much more effective than all the abstinence pledges and other failed initiatives out there."