Go Ahead, Call It Virgin Summer

A year after Brat summer — when the album’s lime-green influence washed over everything from nail polish to politics — Charli XCX passed the torch to Lorde at Coachella. And indeed, Lorde’s new album, Virgin, is her best-reviewed work in years. Fans (and fellow pop stars) embraced its confessional ethos, and Vogue proclaimed the musician’s new, unfussy look signaled a broader move toward uncomplicated styles. So it’s safe to say: As Charli predicted, Lorde summer is upon us. But even the musician’s most ardent fans have been reluctant to call it “Virgin summer,” specifically.

To be sure, virginity is a loaded construct, often tied to purity culture. For those raised in conservative households, it’s seen as something to guard — as one commenter said on Reddit, virgin summer “sounds like a church youth camp trying to teach the dangers of sex” — and for others, it can carry a stigma that grows with time. The perception that a person’s sexual inexperience defines them, and the fear they’re lagging behind peers and potential partners, drives no shortage of media about people trying to “lose” their virginity. (The phrase itself suggests it’s something to be shaken off and not just... a state of being.) Remember in Clueless when Tai called Cher a “virgin who can’t drive”? She wasn’t just making an observation — she was being mean!

But Lorde’s virgin summer comes with no such baggage. She’s not making a claim about literal virginity — and even takes a pregnancy test in “Clearblue” — but argues for harnessing the spirit of your most earnest, uncynical self. As she recently told podcaster Jake Shane, “I was really trying to get back to this place where you’re quite awkward, and it all sort of spills out in a way that maybe you didn’t want it to. Or you reveal something of yourself and it feels really vulnerable — and it sort of all felt like virginity to me.” This back-to-basics mindset informed the stripped-down aesthetic of Virgin’s rollout: The “What Was That” music video, which follows Lorde as she bikes through New York in jeans and a white shirt, was shot on a phone and edited overnight.

It seems that Lorde’s hit on something abuzz in pop culture, as she’s not the only one playing with this kind of metaphorical virginity. In Netflix comedy North of North, young Inuk mom Siaja (Anna Lambe) enters a so-called “second virginity” after leaving her unfulfilling marriage — an era of self-discovery that coincides with the end of a long Arctic winter. In Melissa Febos’ brilliant new memoir The Dry Season, the author doesn’t document virginity — rather, her year of celibacy — but she does find pleasure-filled clarity in recontextualizing herself out of sexual partnerships. (Like Lorde sings in the liberating album-closer, “David”: “I don’t belong to anyone.”) Even the streaming service Max — hear me out — rebranding back to its original HBO Max after two years is an unlikely exemplar of Virgin’s call to embrace the fundamental, to bring out the most “you” you.

Virgin summer is just a mindset — a vibe! But even so, this summer’s actual virgins can be helpful models for the attitude Lorde extolls. TLC’s new show Virgins follows four adults in their 30s and 40s who haven’t had sex, but want to — a welcome counterpoint to reactionary messaging about what kinds of sexuality (and life timelines) are “acceptable.” Unlike the stereotype that an adult virgin must be hapless or buttoned-up, the stars of Virgins prove that virginity — like anything else — is just one part of who they are.

While preparing for a date in one episode, 42-year-old Rhasha Newkirk quips: “My imagination is huge. I always have a ‘what if’ in my mind. When I put my perfume on, you know, you got to get between the thighs.” Rhasha’s thirstiest musings aren’t all that different from a more experienced woman’s. But her willingness to lay them bare — then bursting out in laughter after every raunchy declaration — lends a sense of play and curiosity to the discussion of desire. As Lorde sings on “Hammer,” her horny strut-through-the-city anthem in which she gets turned on by fountain mist: “I might have been born again. I’m ready to feel like I don’t have the answers.”

This summer’s virgins (real and figurative) remind us that it’s OK to be new at something. That’s actually part of the fun! In coming-of-age comedy Summer of 69, a stripper (Chloe Fineman) helps a virginal young woman (Sam Morelos) build confidence in her own sexuality. Quelling her mentee’s skittishness about the prospect while shopping for sex toys, she asks: “‘Haven’t you ever been, like, nervous and excited about something at the same time?”

It’s a salient nudge that applies to life in general, too. Lorde puts this mindset simply: “Aliveness over prowess. Naïveté over disenchantment.”

Another woman who’s definitely living by Lorde’s book? Rosie O’Donnell’s character in the Season 3 premiere of And Just Like That. She plays Mary, a nun who strikes up a connection with Miranda on a work trip. They share a passionate night together — Mary’s first time — before reuniting in Times Square. Sporting a Wicked souvenir T-shirt and wielding a bag of custom M&Ms from the chocolate’s flagship store, Mary approaches her trip like she did her first sexual experience: excited, unabashed, and nary a jaded bone in her body. “It was heaven,” she tells Miranda. “I mean, Wicked live, New York City, and you? This is the best week of my life.”

Sure, singing “For Good” to a hookup isn’t what one might call “chill.” But so what? Showing up as your most authentic self, even if you feel a little silly, is what virgin summer is all about.