Today's Ypulse Guest Post is from Paloma Vazquez. Paloma is a marketing and advertising industry pro, having spent time on both the agency and client sides (straddling them, really). She's passionate about consumer insights — observing what people do and why they do it - and is an avid pop culture junkie. If you work in youth media or marketing and have an idea for a Ypulse Guest Post, send it my way.

Promoting Chastity, Ivy League Style

A recent New York Times piece (reg. required) focused on student organizations promoting abstinence until marriage. While these clubs aren't new to academic environments, this piece focused on Ivy League schools; institutions where logic and questioning are traditionally encouraged. Logic is usually not one of top reasons cited for abstaining from - or engaging in - sexual relationships. However, the platform that some of these Ivy Leaguers profess to is based on philosophy and rational thought.

Despite many members sharing the Catholic faith, they steered away from religion as the foundation for their belief, instead promoting their choice as rooted in logic and facts - and ultimately, as something that empowers the individual and makes them mysterious, worthwhile and desirable. It sounds like these Ivy League chastity groups are taking notes from the political arena - spinning a story around the platform for their beliefs, in an attempt to make it more acceptable and compelling to a larger audience.

I wonder if there's any difference between these Ivy League groups and those in the broader academic environment - other than perhaps their leaning more on (generalized and unproven) facts, i.e. their platform, vs. religion, morality or less tangible notions. Additionally, it sounds like the age old ideas associated with sexual activity (promiscuity or not) and virginity are still alive and well, even in the intellectually enlightened halls of the Ivy League.

The most telling instance involved a campus debate between the embodiment of two opposing lifestyles: A fiercely sexual female student who recounts her experiences on her well-read blog, and the virginal head of the True Love Revolution, a chastity group at Harvard. Unfortunately for those in attendance, highlighting the similarities between each individual's reasoning for her lifestyle (empowering women, not caving in to societal pressure, etc.) came at the expense of an open discourse on their ideological differences. A bored audience could do little more than discuss which debater was more attractive, with one participant concluding that, in the end, "most guys out there would rather end up with a girl like Janie" (the virgin).

Do you notice any differences in the way youth perceive, and respond to, these lifestyle choices vs. when you were growing up? It sounds to me like this is a still a very personal choice with differences in what works and doesn't work for each person. And unfortunately, with some of the same stigmas attached to each - Ivy League or not.

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