Don't Be a Paper Plate

I found the article "Preteen Girls Hear Abstinence Message" by Cathy Spaulding using the News Bank research database.  I searched with the words "abstinence" and "relationships" and found this article fairly low on the list.  Many of the articles that came up were only remotely related to abstinence and relationships and a few only had one of the words mentioned in the article one time with no real content on either subject.

This article, however, speaks about Carol Sallee, a speaker at the Pregnancy Resource Center's annual Spring Tea Party for young girls.  Each year she speaks to these girls about waiting until they are treated like a "fine piece of china" rather than a paper plate to have a sexual relationship with a boy.  She talks about how all young girls need to have the willpower and "internal pressure" to withstand the "external pressures."  Through demonstrations she shows girls how it is much better to wait until marriage to have the "whole candy bar" rather than have part of it now.  Sallee inspires girls to have more self-respect, dress more professionally, and think about each decision before its made.

On one hand, I like the message she is telling.  Waiting until you are treated right to have your first intimate relationship will make it all the more special.  However, I do have a problem with her metaphor of the paper plate.  Obviously it is better for women to be treated like a fine piece of china rather than a paper plate that just gets used and thrown away, but I do not like how she continually refers to women as objects.  She uses pop cans, candy bars, and plates throughout her speech to symbolize a woman's body in some way, but why does she need to use an object at all.  A better message would have been to simply say, wait until you find someone you love and you can not live without.  Who also can not live without you.  Also, I feel boys should have also been included in this event.  Men need to hear the message to remain abstinent until they are in love just as much, if not even more, than women.  My question is why did she not mention love in her speech and is she the only one who feels no need to include being in love as a highly suggested requirement before being intimate?  Is love something that requires first being intimate, or does being intimate first require being in love?  What is the real correlation between the two, if any?

Spaulding, Cathy. "Preteen Girls Hear Abstinence Message." Muskogee Daily Phoenix and Times-Democrat (OK). Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., Feb. 1888. Web. 15 Mar. 2015.