""No one believes I'm a virgin" is a common refrain during the premiere of Hulu's new dating competition series, Are You My First? The reality show centers on "the largest group of eligible virgins ever assembled," the hosts claim-apart from a high school cafeteria, one might assume-to follow the tried-and-true format that defines shows like Love Island and Too Hot to Handle. A perfectly staged villa's worth of conventionally attractive people in their twenties and early thirties are sequestered in tropical splendor to "find love.""
"The twist on the format here is that all of these bombshells are sexually inexperienced. Some of them are religious and don't believe in sex before marriage. Some of them have never been in a serious relationship. And one of them, a 30-year-old Miami cocktail waitress named Rachael, has a little-known but surprisingly common medical condition called vaginismus that makes sex painful, if not impossible."
"'I haven't lost my virginity because I don't lose, period,' says contestant Katya, a 28-year-old artist from New York City who lives by the adage 'Everything is about sex, except sex, which is about power.' 'There's power in having sex, and there's also power in withholding,' she continues. 'Do you think Anne Boleyn went from lady-in-waiting to Queen of frickin' England because she put out?'"
A Hulu dating competition places a large group of sexually inexperienced, conventionally attractive people in a staged villa to find romantic partners. All contestants identify as virgins for varied reasons, including religious beliefs, absence of prior serious relationships, and medical conditions such as vaginismus that can make sex painful or impossible. Contestants express competing views of sex as power and as a withheld advantage, with one contestant explicitly invoking Anne Boleyn as an example of power through sexual choices. The format mirrors Love Island-style isolation and spectacle, and political identities and viewers' reactions also influence dynamics.
Read at WIRED
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