Virgin Envy: The (In)Significance of the Hymen

Virgin Envy: The (In)Significance of the Hymen is a collection of essays that set out to upend our understanding of sexual purity by confronting our beliefs about virginity and highlighting its messiness and how it intersects with colonialism, commodification, race, and religion.

This could have been a very stale, academic book, instead it's smart and fascinating. By examining our relationship with virginity through the mediums of literature and film, the reader is instantly more invested in the topic because we're already invested in those stories. From medieval romance to Bollywood films, the role of abstinence in the Twilight Saga, the boyish and effeminate tropes surrounding queer masculine identities, these essays will quickly absorb you into the politics of pleasure and pain and purity.

The only thing that bums me out about this book is that the footnotes and resources are listed after each essay instead of being cited at the end of the book. If you can ignore that, then you're in for a great read!