by Rachel Zlatkin
One of the first blog entries I ever read was a 2008 entry Digby wrote at Hullabaloo. Digby described the purity ball, a ceremony that originated through an evangelical ministry in Colorado Springs. Her post led to a series that extended over several years coinciding with the ball’s growing popularity and heightened media attention. The ball, created and sponsored by Generations of Light Ministry, combines elements of the father-daughter dance, the purity covenant or vow, and a wedding ceremony. After reading about the ball on Hullaballoo, I began exploring the Generations of Light website and watching interview footage of Randy Wilson, the ministry’s founder, and families participating in the ceremony. Like most people, I was disturbed by the incestuous nature of the ball’s content. But I also had a lot of questions about how the media othered the entire practice, as if its evangelical base meant the ceremony had no bearing on mainstream culture.
The Purity Ball entails a three course meal, a ritualized ballet performance, the purity covenant ceremony, and a dance consisting of waltzes and Hollywood film scores. The most important component of the ball, or at least the part that sets it apart from other versions of the purity vow, is the fact that the daughters are not the only ones to take a vow of purity. During the meal, each father stands behind his daughter’s seat, places his hand on her shoulder, and recites the following pledge:
“I, (daughter’s name)’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and my family as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.” (Generations of Light Ministry)
The father’s pledge “to cover [his] daughter” blurs the line between an unconscious wish for sexual contact and a conscious emphasis on patriarchal control. According to the pledge, the father will be the only “cover” over his daughter’s “purity,” as if he is the blanket of “authority” beneath which she sleeps or the indestructible hymen-esque “protection” often equated with female virginity. The repetition of the word “cover” -- in “This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come” -- echoes the story of Abraham, the man God appoints to father his nation. The father is the “covering” God uses to “influence generations to come,” an influence enacted through his daughter. The vow implies repressed incestuous longings a father has for his daughter while also aligning him with the source of all things. He is the “high priest.” He is both godly protector and godly procreator, the Abraham of his home. Taken at its extreme, the vow conflates the father’s physical authority with parts of his daughter’s anatomy, and presents a father confused about physical boundaries.
An exultant narcissism is also evident in testimonials offered by fathers on the Generations of Light website:
“How can you measure the value of your eleven year old [daughter] looking into your eyes (as you clumsily learn the fox-trot together) with innocent, uncontainable joy, saying ‘Daddy, I’m so excited!’ I have been involved with the Father-Daughter Ball for two years with my daughters, Sarah and Anna. It is impossible to convey what I have seen in their sweet spirits, their delicate, forming souls, as their daddy takes them out for their first, big dance. Their whole being absorbs my loving attention, resulting in a radiant sense of self worth and identity. Think of it from their perspective: ‘My daddy thinks I’m beautiful in my own unique way. My daddy is treating me with respect and honor. My daddy has taken time to be silly, and even made a fool of himself, learning how to dance. My daddy really loves me!’” (Generations of Light Ministry)
In this testimonial, the father describes his experience of his daughters at the purity ball. They are ethereal spirits and souls, yet in formation, their radiance a result of his love, their identity a result of his attention. When his daughters finally give voice in the testimonial, it is because he speaks as them: their repeated “My daddy,” notably in the subject position of each sentence, infantilizes the father-daughter relationship at the same time it professes the daughter’s possession of her father. Their “radiant self-worth and identity” result from his total absorption into her “being.” The sexually charged description of their shared eye contact and joy indicates the father’s high levels of narcissism. Their “dance” with him, he asserts, is their “first” and it is “big.” As such, his daughters embody the consummation of his wish.
Even with all of the interview footage I have watched over the years, these are the two passages to which I most return because they capture a root of patriarchal control that I have rarely seen discussed in the media: envy of the female body. As Melanie Klein defined envy, the emotion is twofold. It entails both a desire for what someone else has alongside a desire to take it and destroy it (If I cannot have it, no one can). The purity locket is one more example of how the covenant mediates these conflicting sides of envy. After a daughter inserts her pledge, often written as a direct address to her future husband, she locks it in the locket. Her father holds the key until her wedding day, at which point he offers it to her husband (Okay… you can have her… as long as you’re an exact replicate of me).
The boundary confusion exhibited in the vow and the testimonial are symptomatic of a patriarch who has not fully differentiated his body from the female body that carried him. He feels perfectly entitled to owning the female body… because in his mind it is his. This is not a problem limited to the evangelical culture. We hear reports about the results of boundary confusion everyday, as women’s health and reproductive rights take hit after hit, and as certain "fathers" obsess over who is in a daughter's bathroom (Envy plays a part in both cases, I'd say). It’s a mistake to dismiss the purity covenant as “freakish,” simply because the practice is not our own. The daughters are one touchstone to a virgin-archetype and the sexual attraction one can feel only through denial -- a denial that extends all the way to her personhood and her rights.
***
The purity ball poses questions about children's rights, the development of personhood and bodily integrity, the role of differentiation, and the sway parental phantasy can hold over a child's experience of her world, her bathroom, her bedroom, and herself. In his 1912-1913 essay, "Totem and Taboo," Freud asks “How much can we attribute to psychical continuity in the sequence of generations? And what are the ways and means employed by one generation in order to hand on its mental states to the next one?” (511). One way to think of the home (or in this case, to think of the purity ball) is as a spatial metaphor for a parental or generational "mental state" --
Parents are so much larger than life. Can any of us forget those grand first impressions based on a parent’s height, sitting on his shoulders with nothing but air to stop us? Or the spread of her arms, and how found we could feel lost in her embrace? While the Generations of Light Ministry recently stopped hosting the purity ball in Colorado Springs, I take it as a living text, one that does, in fact, “influence generations to come,” just as it is professes in the father’s vow. In my next post, I’ll take some time to explain why I think its "mental state" (511) has a reach well beyond the evangelical homes that participated in the ball.
Sigmund Freud. "Totem and Taboo." The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989. 481-513.
One of the first blog entries I ever read was a 2008 entry Digby wrote at Hullabaloo. Digby described the purity ball, a ceremony that originated through an evangelical ministry in Colorado Springs. Her post led to a series that extended over several years coinciding with the ball’s growing popularity and heightened media attention. The ball, created and sponsored by Generations of Light Ministry, combines elements of the father-daughter dance, the purity covenant or vow, and a wedding ceremony. After reading about the ball on Hullaballoo, I began exploring the Generations of Light website and watching interview footage of Randy Wilson, the ministry’s founder, and families participating in the ceremony. Like most people, I was disturbed by the incestuous nature of the ball’s content. But I also had a lot of questions about how the media othered the entire practice, as if its evangelical base meant the ceremony had no bearing on mainstream culture.
The Purity Ball entails a three course meal, a ritualized ballet performance, the purity covenant ceremony, and a dance consisting of waltzes and Hollywood film scores. The most important component of the ball, or at least the part that sets it apart from other versions of the purity vow, is the fact that the daughters are not the only ones to take a vow of purity. During the meal, each father stands behind his daughter’s seat, places his hand on her shoulder, and recites the following pledge:
“I, (daughter’s name)’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and my family as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.” (Generations of Light Ministry)
The father’s pledge “to cover [his] daughter” blurs the line between an unconscious wish for sexual contact and a conscious emphasis on patriarchal control. According to the pledge, the father will be the only “cover” over his daughter’s “purity,” as if he is the blanket of “authority” beneath which she sleeps or the indestructible hymen-esque “protection” often equated with female virginity. The repetition of the word “cover” -- in “This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come” -- echoes the story of Abraham, the man God appoints to father his nation. The father is the “covering” God uses to “influence generations to come,” an influence enacted through his daughter. The vow implies repressed incestuous longings a father has for his daughter while also aligning him with the source of all things. He is the “high priest.” He is both godly protector and godly procreator, the Abraham of his home. Taken at its extreme, the vow conflates the father’s physical authority with parts of his daughter’s anatomy, and presents a father confused about physical boundaries.
An exultant narcissism is also evident in testimonials offered by fathers on the Generations of Light website:
“How can you measure the value of your eleven year old [daughter] looking into your eyes (as you clumsily learn the fox-trot together) with innocent, uncontainable joy, saying ‘Daddy, I’m so excited!’ I have been involved with the Father-Daughter Ball for two years with my daughters, Sarah and Anna. It is impossible to convey what I have seen in their sweet spirits, their delicate, forming souls, as their daddy takes them out for their first, big dance. Their whole being absorbs my loving attention, resulting in a radiant sense of self worth and identity. Think of it from their perspective: ‘My daddy thinks I’m beautiful in my own unique way. My daddy is treating me with respect and honor. My daddy has taken time to be silly, and even made a fool of himself, learning how to dance. My daddy really loves me!’” (Generations of Light Ministry)
In this testimonial, the father describes his experience of his daughters at the purity ball. They are ethereal spirits and souls, yet in formation, their radiance a result of his love, their identity a result of his attention. When his daughters finally give voice in the testimonial, it is because he speaks as them: their repeated “My daddy,” notably in the subject position of each sentence, infantilizes the father-daughter relationship at the same time it professes the daughter’s possession of her father. Their “radiant self-worth and identity” result from his total absorption into her “being.” The sexually charged description of their shared eye contact and joy indicates the father’s high levels of narcissism. Their “dance” with him, he asserts, is their “first” and it is “big.” As such, his daughters embody the consummation of his wish.
Even with all of the interview footage I have watched over the years, these are the two passages to which I most return because they capture a root of patriarchal control that I have rarely seen discussed in the media: envy of the female body. As Melanie Klein defined envy, the emotion is twofold. It entails both a desire for what someone else has alongside a desire to take it and destroy it (If I cannot have it, no one can). The purity locket is one more example of how the covenant mediates these conflicting sides of envy. After a daughter inserts her pledge, often written as a direct address to her future husband, she locks it in the locket. Her father holds the key until her wedding day, at which point he offers it to her husband (Okay… you can have her… as long as you’re an exact replicate of me).
The boundary confusion exhibited in the vow and the testimonial are symptomatic of a patriarch who has not fully differentiated his body from the female body that carried him. He feels perfectly entitled to owning the female body… because in his mind it is his. This is not a problem limited to the evangelical culture. We hear reports about the results of boundary confusion everyday, as women’s health and reproductive rights take hit after hit, and as certain "fathers" obsess over who is in a daughter's bathroom (Envy plays a part in both cases, I'd say). It’s a mistake to dismiss the purity covenant as “freakish,” simply because the practice is not our own. The daughters are one touchstone to a virgin-archetype and the sexual attraction one can feel only through denial -- a denial that extends all the way to her personhood and her rights.
***
The purity ball poses questions about children's rights, the development of personhood and bodily integrity, the role of differentiation, and the sway parental phantasy can hold over a child's experience of her world, her bathroom, her bedroom, and herself. In his 1912-1913 essay, "Totem and Taboo," Freud asks “How much can we attribute to psychical continuity in the sequence of generations? And what are the ways and means employed by one generation in order to hand on its mental states to the next one?” (511). One way to think of the home (or in this case, to think of the purity ball) is as a spatial metaphor for a parental or generational "mental state" --
Parents are so much larger than life. Can any of us forget those grand first impressions based on a parent’s height, sitting on his shoulders with nothing but air to stop us? Or the spread of her arms, and how found we could feel lost in her embrace? While the Generations of Light Ministry recently stopped hosting the purity ball in Colorado Springs, I take it as a living text, one that does, in fact, “influence generations to come,” just as it is professes in the father’s vow. In my next post, I’ll take some time to explain why I think its "mental state" (511) has a reach well beyond the evangelical homes that participated in the ball.
Sigmund Freud. "Totem and Taboo." The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1989. 481-513.