There was a time when Therese Shechter, like most people, thought of virginity as a fairly simple concept. You had it, you lost it, you told a story about it. Then she started working on her documentary, How to Lose Your Virginity, which makes its Chicago premiere November 2, and realized it was ridiculously complicated.
Shechter worked on How to Lose Your Virginity off and on for nearly seven years. The leisurely pace was unintentional: documentaries are expensive and she needed to take breaks for several rounds of fundraising. But the long pauses gave her time to think more deeply about the subject of virginity and assemble a collection of interviewees with a wide range of perspective and experiences: Ellen, a former evangelical Christian whose first penis-in-vagina sexual experience was on her wedding night and was truly, traumatically awful; Brita and Dan, a couple whose decision not to have intercourse before marriage doesn’t preclude them from experimenting with lots of other forms of sex, including a set of graduated dildos; Meghan, a transwoman who wonders what sex will be like now that she’s in a female body; Sarah, a comedian who has made her virginity part of her standup routine; and Erica, the producer of the Barely Legal series of pornos whose own “first time” was a rape.
Since Shechter completed the documentary and took it on the road, she’s been hearing many, many more stories about virginity lost and virginity recovered and virginity defined. She’s collected about 300 of them on a website called V-Card Diaries. “We’re always given one narrative, one ‘right way,’” she says. “You don’t want to get it wrong. But you go to the site and there are 300 different stories and different experiences.”
