The XX Factor: What women really think.

I Don't Buy It ... Your Virginity, That Is, or That Selling It Is "Empowering"

Ugh. I'm not sure what to make of Natalie Dylan, the 22-year-old who popped her media cherry in the fall when she put her virginity on the market and is now back on the scene with her staggering price tag in hand: $3.7 million is the highest bid so far to be the lucky guy to bang her for the first time. (Don't believe her that the hymen's intact? Well, the lie detector backs her up, and she says she's willing to undergo medical tests for doubters).

The libertarians, of course, say this is the free market at its best: "I frankly don't care whether or not the young lady auctions off her virginity, and if someone is foolish enough to pay her more than three million dollars for the somewhat dubious honor of deflowering her, that's between the two parties in the contract as far as I'm concerned," writes Jazz Shaw on the Moderate Voice. That's basically what they said on Jossip, too, and Boston Herald editor Jules Crittenden seems to think "Natalie" (she's going by a pseudonym to protect her safety but apparently has no problem with having pictures like this or this floating around) is on the right track: "If demand is that high, it sounds like a lot of working girls could save themselves a lot of trouble, go for the big bucks in a one-off and retire," he wrote on his blog.

That free market argument makes sense to me. Her body, her choice to sell it for millions. What bothers me is that she's a women's studies major claiming this is "empowering." To whom, exactly? I guess the idea is that she's sending a message to other students who need help financing their education (her goal, hilariously, is a masters in Marriage and Family Therapy). The message: You, too, can pay for your education by having sex with strangers.

But does that actually qualify as empowerment? When Izzie on Grey's Anatomy stripped off her scrubs and shoved her boobs in Alex's face to make the point that she wasn't ashamed of having put herself through med school by posing for underwear ads, I was screaming and grabbing my own boobs right along with her. The logical side of me has a hard time explaining why this is any different, other than that it's illegal (Emily, Dahlia, it is illegal, right?) and less regulated: She's not in a studio posing for pictures; she's in a bed somewhere, being penetrated by a stranger. But even imaging it going totally right—the guy is clean, he uses a condom, he doesn't hurt her—it still feels off to me. Can any of you articulate what I so clearly can't: why this is so far from empowering, and why prostitution is not the same as modeling? Or is the libertarian argument as sound as it seems at first glance?