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So, a 20-year-old Brazilian woman has auctioned off her virginity for $780,000. This story has too many levels of WTF, but Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett tries to make sense of it all:

The Virgins Wanted terms and conditions state that “the female virgin will undergo a medical examination by an accredited gynaecologist and provide the winning bidder with medical evidence of her virginity”. Retro. Meanwhile, Stepanov gets off lightly: “Given the difficulty in certifying a male’s claim to virginity, we ask that you take into consideration the chosen participant, his story and his demeanor when considering his claims to sexual abstinence.” So we’ll just take his word for it, then. And of course, we all know that there isn’t really any medical way to prove virginity – you can lose your virginity to a tampon, a finger or a horse’s saddle. This is one of the reason’s society’s prizing of virginity is so bizarre.

A comment on the Daily Mail’s take on the story sums up this attitude: “At least she is smarter than most women in the UK, who give it away for free.” What fools we are. All I got was a hangover and a trip to the STD clinic, which is nowhere near as good as 780 grand (then again, my big moment didn’t take place on an aeroplane flying between Australia and the US in order to counteract international prostitution laws, but on dry land within easy distance of a hot water bottle).

Photograph: Getty/Greg Wood/AFP/