by Brenda Jin
Walking around campus this morning, I couldn’t help but notice the beautifully designed and well-funded Anscombe Society posters, encouraging me to find love this Valentine’s day, or perhaps go on a date. But let’s talk about who’s depicted in these posters that spell out a well-rehearsed and well-distributed narrative of what an upright relationship should be: young, white, heterosexual, and monogamous men and women. And although the retro style is aesthetically attractive given the vintage madness of the last half decade, I can’t help but notice that these posters are printed in a style that reminds me of the printing technology available before women’s suffrage.
I’m incidentally in the middle of Jessica Valenti’s fabulous book The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Our Young Women. In addition to exploring how fetishizing virginity reinforces a specific model of passive femininity in a heterosexual context, Valenti also discusses how the anxiety surrounding promiscuity and the targets of purity campaigns are mostly young white women:
“Why? Because the sexuality of young women of color—especially African Americans and Latinas—is never framed as ‘good girls gone bad’; rather, they’re depicted as having some degree of pathologized sexuality from the get-go, no matter what their virginity status. You’ll find articles about STI rates, pregnancy, and poverty—which are issues that affect women of color disproportionately and deserve attention. But when articles about the sexual infection rates of African American women are one column over from an article about young white women’s spring break, a disturbing cultural narrative is reinforced—that ‘innocent’ white girls are being lured into an oversexualized culture, while young black women are already part of it.”
I’m not suggesting that these posters on campus serve to reinforce the aforementioned racial stereotypes; I’m simply writing that the relationship between purity and femininity as it relates to white women—and white women only—is publicly displayed in this year’s Anscombe Society V-day posters. Furthermore, I do believe these posters reinforce a very narrow view of passive femininity in their idyllic depictions of romantic relationships: yes, the ideal relationship—that is, the one destined for true love—is consummated after marriage, is one that involves ritualized dating that constitutes a hierarchy of “seriousness”, and is between one white, thin, (probably blonde) well-clothed woman wearing pearls and her white opposite-sex date who is rich enough to one day “put a ring on it”.
I have began to not put much thought into signage that in my opinion, was created by someone who may or may not get it! I wish more people would observe things like you have more often, but I’m sure everyone will still have a point of view that may differ. Marketing is just that, until more people try to understand what may or may not be going on, there will be lots more. It depends on the energy people put behind an issue. ( my opinion)
I was actually glad to see the posters at first. I thought it seemed that Anscombe was purposefully seeking common ground with the rest of the student body by encouraging the celebration of things like commitment and hand holding (though I’m not sure how much “putting a ring on it” resonates with the student body at this point in their lives.) Monogamy, commitment and abstinence are choices that may not reflect everyone’s sexuality, but I think those who do practice those types of relationships deserve to celebrate them on Valentine’s day just as much as Tristan Taormino deserves to celebrates non-monogamy. I think the problem is that many of us feel that the Anscombe society does not endorse their sexual ethic as one among many, but as the only correct one. I also found the critique of the lack of diversity, in race and sexuality, well-founded.
So excited to see that someone else on campus is reading The Purity Myth! The sight of the Anscombe society posters right next to all of the LOVE=LOVE flyers up around campus was pretty interesting. My personal problem with the Anscombe society is the way that it targets young women in particular, emphasizing purity and automatically turning sex (in any form) into something inherently impure. I did notice that all of the posters depicted white people, but I hadn’t thought to analyze that in the context of race relations on campus. The fact that the Anscombe society apparently didn’t think to include any students of color in their poster campaign was especially telling, and I think that in some way the posters do reinforce racial stereotypes already in place.