Abstract

‘Would Donna do it?’ The question teased the television audience of 90210, a sitcom named after its teenage characters’ wealthy Los Angeles zip code. A subplot during the show’s 1994 season featured the dilemma of Donna Martin, a virgin teenager played by Tori Spelling, who indecisively parried the physical advances of her long-term boyfriend. Each week introduced another wrinkle in Donna’s ongoing debate over whether or not to have sex for the first time. As Donna’s dilemma unfolded on Monday nights, newspapers and nightly newscasts reported another virginity spectacle. An organisation called True Love Waits was galvanising teenagers across the United States of America to publicly declare their intention to remain sexually abstinent until marriage. True Love Waits was started in April 1993 by a pair of Tennessee-based Southern Baptist ministers, and it quickly became a grassroots hit. By June 1994, 25,000 teenagers gathered in Washington, DC for a national celebration of sexual purity. Highlighting the campaign’s success, 207,000 pledge cards were staked into the ground of the National Mall. Each card bore the signature of a pledger committed to this vow: ‘Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, those I date, my future mate, and my future children to be sexually abstinent from this day until the day I enter a covenant marriage relationship’ (Willis 1994, 3). Abstinent teens across the county seemed to be rejecting the private ambivalence of 90210’s Donna to join a groundswell of out and proud virgins.