Wed Dec 13

what The Bachelors has to say about virginity

Written by Jodi McAlister, Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture, Deakin University

“I’ve actually never had a girlfriend,” 32-year-old Bachelor Wesley Senna Cortes told contestant Brea Marshall in the second episode of the most recent season of The Bachelors Australia.

Obviously, I grew up with Christian values and trying to do the right thing and not be another reason for girls not to trust men […] I never saw myself as being a one-night-stand guy and, matter of fact, I’ve actually never had sex.

These twin disclosures – of Cortes’ lack of relationships and sexual experience – have formed the foundation of his narrative as one of the three leads in this season of Australia’s longest-running reality romance format.

He is an unusual figure not just in comparison to his fellow leads, Ben Waddell and Luke Bateman, but in reality television more broadly, where adult male virgins – particularly adult male virgins cast as romantic leads – are not commonly seen.

Male virgins in reality romance shows

This is not to say Cortes is a unicorn. There have been other male virgins on Australian reality romance shows and in The Bachelor franchise.

In 2019, then 29-year-old Matthew Bennett was one of the grooms on the sixth season of Married At First Sight. He disclosed to his TV wife ^[1], Lauren Huntriss, he was still a virgin, and later lost his virginity ^[2] to her on their honeymoon.

The poster for ^[3] the 23rd season of The Bachelor US (also 2019) closely mirrored that of the 2005 film The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and included the tagline, “What does he have to lose?”

Later, in his pointedly titled book The First Time: Finding Myself and Looking for Love on Reality TV, star Colton Underwood disclosed ^[4] he lost his virginity, like Bennett, under the auspices of the show, sleeping with his eventual partner, Cassie Randolph.

It seems unlikely Cortes’ narrative in The Bachelors Australia will follow the same path.

For one, unlike Married at First Sight and the US iteration of The Bachelor, the Australian Bachelor franchise does not include sex as a narrative milestone (in the US, this is referred to as the “fantasy suite”). Secondly, he appears to embody “virgin” as an identity in a different way.

Ways of being a virgin

Broadly speaking, sociological literature on virginity has identified two key virgin identity types: adamant virgins and potential non-virgins.

Adamant virgins have made an active decision not to have sex (often until marriage). Potential non-virgins, by contrast, have not made this decision, but have not found themselves in an appropriate situation.

Virgins in the first category often make their choice for religious or moral reasons. Those in the second category are often waiting for the right partner.

While their narratives of virginity are not as clear-cut as these two tidy identity categories, arguably both Bennett and Underwood were potential non-virgins.

“It was never a conscious choice to still be a virgin at 29,” Bennett said in his Married at First Sight audition tape ^[6].

It was just an unfortunate side effect of walling myself off from any sort of vulnerability, being social and dating.

Underwood, unlike Bennett, is openly Christian, and this was often assumed to be the reason for his maintained virginity. However, he offered a different one ^[7] after breaking up with Randolph and coming out as gay in 2021:

I could never give anybody a good answer of why I was a virgin. The truth is I was a virgin Bachelor because I was gay, and I didn’t know how to handle it.

Cortes, however, seems to occupy the first category. He is a devout Christian and these religious convictions seem to have underpinned an active choice.

This makes him an adamant virgin – something of a problem for many of the women paired with him on the show.

Virginity loss narratives

Sociologist Laura Carpenter outlines ^[8] three key ways in which people tend to think about virginity loss: as a gift (something to be valued), as a stigma (something to be disposed of as soon as possible), and as part of a process (a rite of passage in a broader process of sexual maturation).

Many more men than women, she notes, tend to view their virginity in terms of stigma – as something “abnormal and in need of explanation”. This, paired with a widespread toxic assumption that virginity loss can make a boy a man, means male virginity in particular can be pathologised.

Unlike Underwood’s season of The Bachelor US, The Bachelors Australia has not sought to fetishise nor especially belabour Cortes’ virgin identity (unlike the way it approached the narrative of polyamorous contestant Jessica Navin in the previous season ^[9]). Instead, his lack of relationship and sexual experience has been treated as a problem of compatibility with many of the female contestants.

Both Marshall, to whom he initially disclosed his virginity, and fellow contestant Jade Wilden have asked Cortes how comfortable he would be sexually progressing with a partner.

“I was nervous […] that he might progress too quickly, and […] now I’m nervous he won’t progress at all,” Marshall said. Wilden appeared to share that fear, especially when Cortes stated he would not want to move in with a partner before marriage.

If we think of virginity loss as a step in a process, this compatibility concern arises from a worry from these potential partners that they and Cortes might be at very different – possibly irreconcilable – steps in that process.

In the season premiere, the show teased the strong possibility one of the three Bachelors might end the show heartbroken. It will be interesting to see, given these narratives of potential mismatch developing around Cortes, whether that man will be him.