Ebtihal Mahadeen
Title of research: Representations of Female Virginity in Contemporary Jordanian Culture
Female virginity is at the heart of several social phenomena in Jordan such as honour crimes, hymen reconstruction surgery, virginity tests, and the recent “fake hymen” controversy involving the importation of a sex toy that can act as a hymen. Until recently, female virginity was considered a taboo subject that was never explicitly engaged with socially and in the media whereas nowadays it is one of the hottest topics in the country. Both the media and Jordanians themselves engage with it more openly than before and a number of different attitudes exist in relation to it in Jordanian society.
The representations of female virginity that exist in Jordanian society are informed by how the media present issues relevant to it and how Jordanians respond to them, and these representations in turn inform policies and shape Jordanians’ experiences, be they women or men. To understand these representations, I am interested in analyzing both media coverage and Jordanians’ attitudes to female virginity through examining news stories published in online media (such as newspaper websites, independent news websites, and blogs) and readers’ comments which influence, and are influenced by, the stories themselves.