Easy A and Virginity Loss

Easy A was a teenage comedy starring Emma Stone that was released in 2010. It is inspired by Nathanial Hawthorne’s well-known novel The Scarlett Letter. The film revolves around high school student Olive Penderghast’s changing reputation from a good girl to a promiscuous “slut” in order to become more popular. Another narrative in the film is about Olive’s relationship with her best friend Brandon, who is gay. He opens up to Olive about being bullied because he is gay and asks her to pretend to have sex with him at a party in order to gain popularity and acceptance by his peers. That is what you witnessed above in the hilarious scene.

The major focus of the film is arguably about the double standard men and women receive for having sex: Brandon gains acceptance by pretending to have sex, while Olive faces a mixture of negative and positive consequences for lying about having sex. But another equally important narrative focuses on the pressure these teenagers feel to have sex and lose their virginity in order to gain acceptance and popularity. This narrative reminded me of two separate, but similar articles we have read for class.

One of the articles is Stella Chia and Albert Gunther’s article about misperceptions of social norms about sex. Chia and Gunther found that college students “tend to overestimate the sexual permissiveness of their peers” and that “for male students, misperceptions regarding peer norms about sex may produce a greater likelihood of engaging in some sexual activities” (Chia & Gunther, 2006). This was all found to be related to portrayals of sexual permissiveness in the media. I think Easy A is a good example of how students perceive their peers as having more sex than is actually the case, as evidenced by why Olive and Brandon both thought that having sex would give them more acceptance and popularity.

Researcher Maura Kelly found a similar prevalent narrative when she coded teenage dramas on television for virginity loss narratives. One script she found often in relation to why teens lost their virginity was the urgency script. This script presented virginity loss as crucial to acceptance by peers, which made it a desperate and urgent act (Kelly, 2010). It also presented the consequences of virginity loss as positive and beneficial to the characters (Kelly, 2010). I think these scripts particularly apply to the Easy A example above because Brandon, especially, thought losing his virginity was imperative and urgent to his social standing.

Messages about sexual norms and virginity loss are pretty prevalent in the media today and as evidenced above, both of them have impacts on norms about sex and permissiveness. This is particularly important when considering health concerns related to sex and sexually transmitted diseases. If people are perceiving others as having more sex than in reality, then they might start partaking in more sexually activity for no other reason than gaining acceptance and as evidenced by Chia and Gunther, this acceptance is based on a false reality. People are actually having less sex on average than what people believe. I think these studies present an interesting opportunity for people to become aware of the fact that the sexual permissiveness norms are much less than what they perceive them to be and that acceptance into groups does not depend on one’s sexual activity given this acceptance is based on a false perception.

References:

Chia, S. C., & Gunther, A. C. (2006). How media contribute to misperceptions of social norms about sex. Mass Communication & Society, 9(3), 301-320. Doi: 10.1207/s15327825mcs0903_3

Kelly, M. (2010). Virginity loss narratives in “teen dramas” television programs. Journal of Sex Research, 47(5), 479-489. Doi: 10.1080/00224490903132044