You have full access to this open access article. The main argument is based on the observation of the recurrence of fetishistic attitudes towards bodily objects and ritual behaviors associated with the initiation into sexuality and the idea of physical and moral purity.
The SR of virginity is observed in a heterogeneous corpus: history books, short stories, novels, anthropological archives, secondary data on the conception of virginity among young people, essays, online press, ethnographic reports, etc. Entering the world of sexuality, however, involves bodily techniques and behaviors that are less and less regulated today. The representational, semantic connotations, effects of cultural matrices and historical evolution of the purity associated with virginity are also examined.
The interpretation of the social representation of the virginity and its anthropological logic are synthesized at the end of the article. Finally, the philosophical and psycho-sociological meanings of the purity fetish are presented. The social representation or SR of virginity associated with defloration practices refers more generally to sexual initiation practices and thus to first times.
It is highly charged with a variety of meanings, particularly through the influence of traditional values derived from the major monotheistic religions or from community or family-based social groupings that have preserved certain beliefs and rites handed down from generation to generation. The aim of this article is to gain a better understanding of the paradoxical , ascetic, spiritualistic, materialistic, exhibitionistic, and instrumentalized idealization of the supposed physical, even moral, purity of virginity and of the acts associated, to varying degrees, with defloration.
Serge Moscovici: insisted in various writings on the attention that should be paid to the complex and authentic character of the practical knowledge of folk cultures [ 79 , 80 ]. Reducing popular knowledge or common sense to cognitive biases would be a trend in current social cognition research, which is dominant in North American social psychology [ 79 ]. The consideration of this characteristic of the differentiated social anchoring of the SR of virginity and therefore of the practices associated with it, could probably be useful for public policy makers, educators and social workers.
