The purity economy

I will remember the pinecones most of all, spiky nubs half buried in crumbly gray soil and tangled in dried grass fronds, the sensation of stepping on a Lego over and over again but deep in the countryside, the constant dodging and weaving like the forest floor is lava. I will remember the scent of the fire pits, the outhouses, the pines and spruces and firs that smell like home, confusing my nose because I’m not at home and even though there are hundreds of us at this camp I have never been more alone. And I will remember following the camp modesty rules to the letter, packing oversized t-shirts and shorts that cover my knees to protect my brothers in Christ from my body. I will always remember that I am the only one who does.

You see, I believe them when they tell me I am dangerous, that the sight of my thighs can cause boys to stumble, that the outline of my figure will make them lust in their hearts, so logically I must conceal and disguise these parts of myself. I believe them when they tell me every touch I allow a boy means I am stealing from, even cheating on, my husband, whom I don’t know yet but am assured definitely exists. I will be an adult the first time I hug a boy I am not related to by blood, and it will feel rebellious, subversive.

But here in the forest, I am not a rebel yet. Instead I am annoyed and angry at the other girls, who wear shorts shorter than mine and get away with it because, as it happens, no one here actually cares or follows the logic of the rules. I can’t decide if I am judging them or jealous of them, that they are so free. That they are petite and pretty and vivacious, and I am none of those things. That they are good at being Christian and at being loved, and I am not.

“You are beautiful,” a boy announces into a bullhorn, not to me. Several of us stand in a cluster by the tents and he points it at a girl a few yards away from me, who rolls her eyes. It’s just Sasha, up to his usual shenanigans. “Kristina, you are beautiful.” Then the girl beside her. “Jennifer, you are beautiful.” Then the next, to my left. “Allie, you are beautiful.” Then he arrives at me. He pauses a moment, looks at me, says nothing. Then he resumes on my right. “Riley, you are beautiful.” And so on, praising the beauty of all the girls in the vicinity while I try to pretend I don’t notice I have been skipped. We all laugh at his antics and shout at him to go away and I try to squeeze my massive frame into a smaller space and hope no one else has witnessed my humiliation, that I caught my reaction before it could show on my face. Who cares what some stupid boy thinks anyway.

After years of hearing that my body is a threat, that being touched by a boy makes me a thief, stealing from a someday-husband who already owns me, now it begins to occur to me that these are lies. Maybe my body is not a threat, because they don’t even look at it. Maybe boys don’t want to touch me, because I am not the kind of girl they desire—too big, too bony, too brainy. Maybe there is no someday-husband to steal from, and there never will be. Maybe the church literally does not have room for girls like me, the un-desired. These thoughts also feel subversive, too subversive to voice.

It is now, at seventeen, that I begin to decode the purity economy, purity culture’s prosperity gospel. This idea that accumulating enough virtue or value will earn you a spouse, and conversely if you don’t have one it is because you don’t deserve one. People are reduced to goods, traded and acquired. The currency of this economy is purity, a strange and unholy mixture of being both desirable and unattainable. Many of us grew up learning metaphors of the sin of being too attainable: the chewed gum, the crushed rose, the spit water, the licked lollipop, the unsticky duct tape, the specter of not getting to wear a white wedding dress. What I learn on this day is the opposite, the consequence of being unattainable but not desirable: No points are awarded for staying pure if no one wanted you anyway. This will not be the last time a boy does something like this to me.

It will be easier, now that I know I have been lied to, to peel back the surface and see the rest of purity culture for the lie that it is, to know that even beautiful bodies are not a threat, that we are not the property of men, and if boys don’t want to sin they should look after themselves, goddamnit. But I learn that the purity economy is cruel long before I learn that it is imaginary. A wiser me will one day know that this boy’s opinions do not matter, that my face and my clothes and my height and my sharp edges do not make me unloveable. This wiser me will know it, even when she doesn’t always believe it. But I am not wise yet.