With minimum wage raising at a snail’s pace as compared to tuition fees (not to mention rent and groceries) and student loan agencies notoriously random with handouts, student across the country submit to myriad wacky plans to keep their cupboards stocked with tomato soup and ramen noodles. I, myself, have been known to dole out balloons and extra ice cream scoops at the pizza joint that I waitress at in hopes that the kids’ parents will leave me a hefty tip.
It seems 22-year-old Natalie Dylan (not her real name) of Sacramento, California, is one step ahead of me in that she’s auctioning off her virginity in order to pay for grad school.
Already saddled with a degree in Women’s Studies (seriously), Dylan is hoping to grab a cool million for her cherry, to be offered up at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel in Nevada.
Are tuition fees really that high in the U.S.? Where’s President-elect Obama on this one?
Dylan is quoted as saying, “We live in a capitalist society. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to capitalize on my virginity?”
Of all the comments and criticisms that have been hurled at Dylan, my favourite was someone who referred to the plan as “the ultimate act of feminism.” Oddly enough, I heard a friend of mine say something similar in regards to her plans to graduate university, get married, have babies and stay at home and raise them.
Never one to qualify myself a feminist in any way, with This Mag’s current cover story, ‘The New Face of Porn,’ the comment got me thinking: has all the bra-burning and business-suiting of the 1960s been watered down to a laissez-faire feminist culture (Sarah Palin definitely knocked us women down a few pegs) or is the simple act of choice what the first-wavers were lobbying for all along?
Is choosing to auction off one’s virtue the epitome of feminism, or the antithesis of it?
A video of Natalie Dylan on CNN, after the jump.