In Name Only: "Virgins" by Danielle Evans

In her short story “Virgins,” Danielle Evans follows the lives of two 14-year-old girls as they attempt to define, accept, and take control of their own sexualities. The analysis of the progression of the two female characters’ interactions with men throughout the story and how Evans portrays each girl’s perceived and employed sexual autonomy in these situations serves to illuminate the author’s view of virginity as something that is reliant on a woman’s embracement of her own sexuality, rather than whether or not she has had vaginal sex. Close examination of Evan’s alternatingly forceful and understated diction, Erica and Jasmine’s reactions to sexual situations, the difference between the two girls’ similar but diverging story-lines, and the character in the subject position of each sentence leads the reader to rethink the widely-accepted definition of virginity.

Evans first brings her readers’ attention to Erica’s lack of sexual autonomy when she is at the pool with two of her friends, Jasmine and Michael. Erica relates that she “let Michael rub sunscreen gently into [her] back,” despite the fact that the sunscreen undesirably “smelled like bananas,” and is, according to Jasmine, “some white people shit” that the three African-American characters do not need (1-2). By allowing Michael to perform this unnecessary and unpleasantly smelly action on Erica, Evans is pointedly showing the reader that Erica is not in charge of her body. A man took control over Erica, rubbing sunscreen into her body when she could have very well put it on herself, or not at all. Erica surrenders her choice to Michael, rather than asserting dominance over her own body. Although the reader is not yet fully aware of how sexually experienced Erica is, Evans is subtly suggesting through her interaction with Michael that Erica is not the one making decisions about her body or her sexuality.

This lack of sexual self-determination is reflected in Evans’ later descriptions of Erica’s encounters with men. In Erica’s voice, Evans reveals that the character’s first major sexual experience did not happen on her own terms. First, Evans notes the position of power the boy was in. As “a lifeguard at the city pool,” five years older than the then 11-year-old Erica, this man holds definite authority; he is an older figure who enforces the rules that Erica must follow, who sits above her on his umbrella’d throne and is singularly in charge of ensuring Erica’s safety (5). This role of dominance implies Erica’s lack thereof, showing the reader that she is not the one whose will is being fulfilled in this encounter. Evans then describes Erica’s lack of jurisdiction over the situation: the lifeguard “put [her] down” and “held [her] against the cement” while touching her inappropriately (5). Evans uses these forceful verbs, “put” and “held”, to describe the lifeguard’s actions over Erica in order to accentuate the idea that Erica is not herself choosing to engage in sexual activity. Erica has not chosen to give up this aspect of her virginity, and therefore in doing so does not gain maturity or sexual autonomy. When this scene is combined with the pervious image of Erica letting Michael put sunscreen on her, the audience learns that Erica has not yet taken charge of her sexuality.

Both Erica and Jasmine view sex as something that happens to them, rather than of their own accord. Jasmine later tells Erica that the lifeguard “did that to everyone,” and neither girl seems particularly concerned with the whole situation; Erica’s reaction was not one of fear, as the situation left her only “cold and surprised” (5-6). Here, Evans uses removed, nonexplosive diction that undersells the gravity of the situation — the girls have both been assaulted — in order to show her reader that the girls do not view themselves as having the right of self-determination of their own sexualities. Therefore, Erica and Jasmine have not yet lost their innocence or, figuratively, their virginities.

Jasmine’s storyline serves to further elucidate Evan’s view of virginity, as she follows a similar plot as her friend, but with a slightly different sexual history. While explaining why the girls do not wish to spend time with Michael’s friends, Evans reveals to the reader that Jasmine “lost her virginity to Michael’s friend Eddie four months before” (7). Up until this point in the story, it has remained possible that both girls are, as the title suggests, “Virgins”. Suddenly, it is revealed that only one person in the story has not had sex; Erica is the only literally virginal character. However, Evans has previously shown her audience through Jasmine’s naive reaction to Erica’s lifeguard story that despite her experience, Jasmine too has not yet found sexual independence. Jasmine is, in Evans’ eyes, still one of the titular “Virgins” in that she still believes that men decide her sexuality.

Nonetheless, Jasmine does begin to wrest control back from the boys before Erica does. When the two girls and Michael meet his friends, several of the boys make advances on Jasmine. This time, however, Jasmine does not remain passive, but pushes back — when Eddie’s friend Tre makes a sly, off-hand comment and puts an arm around her, “Jasmine [pushes] his arm off” (11). Evans also relates through Erica’s eyes that “all Eddie’s friends had been trying to push up on Jasmine since they found out she’d done it with him,” but that “Jasmine wasn’t having it” (11). Here, Evans employs similar rough, forceful verbs to describe the boys’ actions as she did the lifeguard — for example, their attempts to “push up” — but contrastingly shows Jasmine reciprocating with almost identically vehement diction,“pushing” back against them. Jasmine is fighting back, making her own sexual decisions independent of men. For the first time, one of the girls is beginning to take ownership of her sexuality.

Jasmine displays similar changes when dealing with several older men she meets at a club. Evans writes that when the two girls get into a car with these strange men, heading to an after party, Erica sees Jasmine crawl onto one man’s lap, “[putting] her arms around him,” and “kissing the man… deep” (20-21). In all previous encounters, the male character served as the subject of Evans’ sentences, carrying out the verbs. Yet, Jasmine is now performing these actions herself. That the sentence reads, “Jasmine was kissing the man,” rather than that the man was kissing Jasmine, is a noticeable shift (21). This choice shows the audience that Jasmine has become her own fully autonomous sexual being; it is the point at which Jasmine has fully lost her virginity. She has left behind her previous naiveté, passiveness, and innocence with regards to sex and has taken the power over her sexuality into her own hands.

Meanwhile, Erica has not yet found this side of herself, and is still a virgin. While at the club, Evans’ descriptions of her experiences with men have not changed; the men are still the ones performing the actions and making the choices. While Erica is on the dance floor, “two men come up behind [Jasmine and her] and [start] grinding” (18). Here, Evans gives the men the power of being the subject of the sentence, rather than allowing Erica to choose how to display her sexuality. Later, in the car with Jasmine, Erica’s date “[looks] down at [her],” in an archetypal example of height equating to dominance. Evans allows the man command of the situation not only through her sentence structure, but also through his metaphorical position of ascendency. Through these choices, the reader sees that Erica is still letting men govern her sexuality, and has thus not yet taken her sexual choices into her own hands.

Yet, Erica’s moment of liberation does come. She finds herself in a hotel elevator, rising quickly towards a dangerous party she does not want to attend. In this moment, Evans acknowledges Erica’s habit of reliance on others to make decisions for her, when she “[keeps] waiting for the thing that would stop [this],” before finally taking herself and her body into her own hands, realizing “nothing will stop this but [her],” and running out of the elevator and away from the situation (22). In this passage, Evans draws attention to this shift in Erica’s thinking by placing her two contrasting thoughts right next to each other, using strikingly similar word choice to illuminate very different world-views. The audience first hears Erica thinking of herself and her situation in her old, powerless way, and then immediately hears her shift to see herself and her sexuality in a new autonomous light. In the space of a sentence, Erica has stopped waiting around for others to make her decisions for her, and takes the power to stop the situation into her own hands. She has now for the first time made her own decision regarding sex, in this case to get away and not have it. Although this is the opposite direction as the one that Jasmine chose, the change in Erica is the same — both girls have begun to take control of their own sexuality.

For Erica, however, this change is not immediately lasting or complete. After being rescued by Michael and his brother Rob, Erica regresses directly back into her old way of relating to men. Evans returns to placing the boys as the subject of the sentence, therefore giving them control of Erica and the situation. Erica does not tuck herself into bed; rather, Michael and Rob “put [her] on the downstairs couch and [give her] a blanket” (25). Similarly, when Rob comes to attempt to sleep with Erica, he alone initiates the situation — he “put[s] his arm around [her]” and “[pulls her] toward him” (25). It seems as though Erica, when placed back into a semi-familiar situation, has already forgotten her newfound ability to choose what happens to her sexually.

Yet, when she begins to moves towards sleeping with Rob, she again begins to assert her power to make her own decisions. Their time together becomes an uncomfortable back-and-forth, as each person holds and then gives up the power in the situation. When Rob “[kisses her], hard,” she “[kisses] him back, harder” (25). Evans’ quickly changing sentence structure allows each character time in the subject position. Evans again gives Rob control over Erica, when he “[grabs her] hand and… [pushes her] skirt around [her] hips,” and then switches back to Erica’s new self-determination when she “[sits] on the bed and [pulls her] underwear off” of her own accord, rather than allowing him to do it for her (26). This tradeoff of which character Evans places in the star spot of each sentence, and therefore gives the power in the situation, illuminates the battle between Erica’s views of her sexuality. The scene questions whether Erica will allow Rob to control her, or take the control for herself, thus loosing her virginal belief that men drive her sexuality.

This question is not fully answered until the final scene of the story, when Erica walks herself into Michael’s room and crawls into his bed, recounting that “[she] reached forward to pull him toward [her]” (26). In this, the second to last sentence of her story, Evans finally relinquishes full control of the situation to Erica, making her the subject of her own sentence, and allowing her to have total autonomy. Having fully embraced her own sexuality, Erica is no longer one of the “Virgins” named in the story’s title. Evans’ exploration of her characters’ changing relationships with men has now carried each girl from taking a passive to an active role in her own sex life. Given that her story does not literally involve the titular plural “Virgins,” the characters’ path seems to indicate that Evans is not referencing virginity in its literal definition, but rather looking at the term through a new lens: each girl does not lose her virginity until she, herself, makes her own decision to do so.