Purity, Rape, and Bottled Water

About nine months ago I watched the movie Taken with my then-girlfriend and her father. It was a little awkward. If you haven’t seen it, the whole movie is an elaborate father fantasy about an aging, retired CIA dad (played by Liam Neeson) whose hot teenaged daughter is kidnapped by Eastern European thugs in Paris. The second half of the movie basically consists of him killing people in a race to save his daughter’s virginity. Again: I was watching this next to my girlfriend’s dad.

One of the gangsters Neeson tortures to death explains that his daughter has not been violated, yet, because virgins fetch much, much more money for the kidnappers. In fact the delay that makes rescue possible occurs because she is being auctioned off.

The movie was a blunt instrument, to be sure, but I appreciated how firmly it connected the fetishization of virginity with rape. I’ve long thought there was something pretty creepy about non-virgins who are overly interested in dating/sleeping with virgins. From a strictly pleasure-seeking point of view, it doesn’t seem rational. Unless you’re similarly green and feel intimidated by a knowing partner, why would you prefer sex with someone completely inexperienced at sex? There’s an irrational erotic principle at work here, and to my mind, it’s a pretty dark one. To fetishize purity is to create structural violence in your fantasy life, because the act of attaining your desired object is the same act as destroying it.

– — –

I was looking at a shelf full of different bottled water brands the other day and became increasingly disturbed at the subtext in their marketing copy. Take a leading product:

Apparently the market research shows that nothing sells spring water wrapped in hormone-disrupting plastic like the subtle touch of rape fantasy. Purer water is healthier, I guess, but “untouched by man”? Am I really not supposed to read into that? Voss, how about you?

VOSS Artesian Water is amongst the purest waters in the world. Taken from a virgin aquifer shielded for centuries under ice and rock in the untouched wilderness of central Norway.

The feeling of trampling across a delicate, flower-filled mountain meadow can be yours for $4.29 a pop. But can I indulge my urge to despoil mother nature at a lower price? Don’t worry, there’s always Evian:

Yeah, live young. Reach “deep inside the earth”, for water “perfectly protected beneath dense layers of glacial sands” and taste something “untouched by man”.

But cost aside, there are so many choices, so many maidenly potables to choose from, that I really need a standard metric to help me determine how much dark pleasure to take in breaking each distinct tamper-proof safety seal. That’s why the people over at finewaters.com, who don’t allow Freudians into their meetings, have invented the highly scientific and totally-not-rape-fetishistic term “Virginality” as a standard of comparison.

They’re also helpfully provided an objective scale they use to rate virginality among different brands. VEEN Water, for instance, is very proud that:

VEEN Spring Waters’ virginality has been rated nothing less than superior.

And you’re never gonna get your hands around a tall cold glass of Superior Virginality with a Brita filter, my friends.

(The next time you taste some high-end bottled water, perhaps at a fine restaurant, moan loudly and exclaim: “Such delicious VIRGINALITY!”  You will look sophisticated; tuxedoed waiters will nod knowingly.)

All of this brought me to the stark realization that I’m in the wrong business. These people are selling water, a substance that is fucking given away in most settings, and their profit margins are huge.

That’s why I’ve started my own spring water company, and we’re gonna cut the bullshit, distill this reptilian psychological sales pitch into it’s purest form, and rake in the cash.

I give you nymf:

Advertisement