ABSTRACT
Despite a sharp decline in church membership in the United States, Christianity’s ideological intensity has strengthened, leading to a dangerous cultural context in which religious fervor is most clearly articulated through political beliefs, including the proliferation of abstinence-only education. In this chapter, I analyze the treatment of purity culture in two contemporary teen media sites. The 2019 film Yes, God, Yes and the 2020 Netflix series Teenage Bounty Hunters feature White, middle-class teen girl protagonists exploring their sexuality in the confines of purity culture, specifically in predominantly White Christian high schools. I consider how feminist critiques of purity culture and abstinence-only education have been incorporated into teen media that overtly features religious institutions. I argue these shows indicate that mainstream discussions of abstinence-only education take into account feminist critiques of purity culture as upholding the myth of gender essentialism, being homophobic, and ignoring girls’ sexual desires.
