the 72 people that you meet in heaven

The girl, aged about fourteen years and still sporting the ruddy plump of youth, pads past meekly, unconvinced and reticent to accept the power of which biology is the sole guarantor. Her footfalls are ones of reticence, covering a distance laterally that is nearly as far as locomotive, as she tip toes down the sunny neighborhood alleyway. Youth is universal, she sporting a vertically striped polo shirt both distressed and cut (less than generous to the implacable holdout of a tummy) in the style that is just as popular with western ‘tweens.’ That is, until she shuffles and the unprepared observer notices, nestled into the nebula of pink stars between her shoulder blades: ‘virgin.’

Obviously, the social politics of sexuality in Indonesia are a bit of a departure from what many infidels in the West might be accustomed to. Yet the expectation of some code of higher morality that basically extols that endemic to Islam also seriously misses on reality. Certainly, in a cultural and religious (both Indonesian and Islamic, though it should be mentioned that Indonesian Christianity is no different) milieu where morality is paramount, it is inevitable that virginity is thoroughly prized and fortified by the community.

Yet, consider an oft-run television ad that begins with a shot of a young girl in her bedroom boxing up, among other artifacts of childhood, her teddy bear. An older female figure then hands her another box which contains the product in question, skin whitening body lotion which she applies and becomes, through the slow fill television effect, of even fairer complexion. The spot ends with this young girl walking down the street exuding radiance and soft light to the open mouthed astonishment of the boys along the route.

Save the explication, as one does not need to yank the tarpaulin off the Marshall McLuhan excavator to get a handle on this type of imagery. This is not meant as an ad hominine attack on Islam, nor a pronunciation on all Moslems, but in a great number of instances the battle of conservative ethics against modernity in adapting to modern medias and mores has done little more than synthesize and validate the cultural fetishization of adolescent purity and innocence. While this is not necessarily a wholly Islamic tendency, it is most often couched in Islamic terms and symbolism, and, after all, Indonesia is a country where headscarf sporting women appear in TV public service announcements encouraging you to call these numbers and advocate for further censorship of media (of which there is already plenty). Shakespeare in Love was on TV the other night and the whole screening took about forty minutes. The end result is such repression of sexuality that this chastity in itself becomes the fixation, often in crude and bizarre ways.

If nothing else this sort of reactionary conservatism ensconces nothing more than a slavering male vantage with purity and youth (not to mention women) as base sexual objects. Not just objects—when you first realize that yes, strangely, many young women choose to ride around on the backs’ of motor bikes sidesaddle—but virginity transporters. Not only disconcerting, but begs the question if traditional Islamic values and modernity (not to mention women’s issues) are mutually destructive. Where is the line between fetish and moral symbolism and when does the former begin to supersede the other?