VIRGINITY CLOTHS AND VAGINAL COVERINGS IN EKITI, NIGERIA

Elisha P. Renne

The body is the innermost part of the material self in each of us; and certain parts of the body seem more intimately ours than the rest. The clothes come next.–W. James, Principles of Psychology

Introduction

Until relatively recently, it was taken for granted in American society that a concrete physiological marker–a thin, membranous tissue known as the hymen–constituted a woman's virginity, the state of never having had sexual intercourse with a man. Further evidence of virginity was the rupture of the hymen upon first intercourse, which resulted in a sign of blood. The unequivocal presence of this bodily marker (the hymen) in all virgins has since been questioned (Kahn and Holt 1990, 152), and its absence is no longer considered legally sufficient evidence of a nonvirgin state (Townsend 1974, 3). This reassessment of what signifies virginity underscores the political nature of such readings of the body, which, grounded in a particular social and historical context, "must be regarded as a narrative of culture in anatomical disguise" (Laqueur 1990, 236). Expanding on this insight in the Nigerian context, I analyze here the particularities of one such narrative, based on interviews with 95 Ekiti Yoruba women, whose experience of the importance of a hymen-like tissue, the ibale–" a sort of biological undergarment protecting the female genitals" (Sissa 1990, 1)–has changed dramatically in the last seventy-five years. What is striking about their remarks is that they illustrate how the meaning attributed to a so-called anatomical given may shift in time. For these Ekiti Yoruba women, the shift in the perception of the ibale-hymen–from something whose presence was preserved and celebrated at marriage to something old-fashioned and traditional that should be quickly dispensed with–relates to changing ideas about what constitutes "enlightened" behavior and knowledge, which are in turn part of a shift in relations of power in Ekiti society in colonial and post-colonial Nigeria.

Ekiti views of virginity also illustrate the ways in which bodily states may be conflated with material objects–in this case, cloth and clothing–underscoring Durkheim's insights about the dialectical relation between ideas held by people which are embodied in things. Like the "leprosy of a mildewed garment" of the Old Testament, which was ritually cleansed as if it were a leper (Leviticus 14:1?9, 47?59), the white cloths used to test the presence of hymeneal blood were synonymous with the virgin herself. However, before discussing the related careers of the ibale-hymen and virginity cloths in Ekiti Yoruba social life, I would like to consider what these women meant by the term virginity, whose meaning–couched in terms of local knowledge of the body as well as influenced by social and political concerns–cannot be assumed.

Virginity in Ekiti

In the Ekiti Yoruba context, virginity is referred to generally by the term ibale, which also refers more specifically to a part of the body. One traditional healer (babalawo) described its bodily manifestation as looking like a red "plastic-film wrapping" covering the vagina (obo or oju ara), something like an "internal security system." This vaginal covering was also described by an older woman as being

something like blood, very thick and as soon as the man is able to penetrate, the thing will just break, and that shows the girl has lost her virginity. It is called ibale and at the same time ayere. It is the thing that stained the white cloth and shows that one has lost her virginity.

Another younger woman compared it to the breaking of a palm kernel:

It is usually difficult to be able to penetrate the first time. For about three hours the man will still be trying, because it will be very hard. And it is painful that day. It will just be as if someone were trying to crack a palm kernel. If the woman is still a virgin, as soon as the man is able to penetrate, blood will just stain the white cloth that has been spread on the bed. That shows that she has not known a man before.

Several other women mentioned this hardness of the ibale: "The place was hard and thick and when the man was able to penetrate, the place will soften, then blood will come out."

These descriptions are, to the best of my understanding, what physiologically constitutes the "hymen" for Yoruba Women. The Western perception of virginity as a particular bodily state defined by the presence of a particular bit of anatomy, the membranous hymen which when pierced results in bleeding, while similar in some ways to the Yoruba perception of virginity, is not the same. For example, no woman mentioned the use of manual examinations to ascertain whether the ibale-membrane was intact. Rather, for them, the membrane–the reddish, plastic-like covering that is hard and then softens after penetration–and the resulting blood were conflated. If the ibale-membrane is present, there must be blood, as explained by one older woman:

Do you know of any example when a girl insisted that she was a virgin but she didn't bleed?

There was nothing like that because it was compulsory in the past that when you lost your virginity you must see blood. If blood was not seen, it meant that one had lost one's virginity before.

As if to emphasize this point, there is no linguistic distinction made in Yoruba between the hymen, hymeneal blood, and virginity. The word ibale refers to all three–to the membranous thing (ibale) that is pierced or penetrated (ja); to the blood-like thing (ibale or ayere), thick and dark, that stains the white cloth, which confirms a woman's virginity; to the state of virginity (ibale) itself.

This triple conflation of membrane, blood, and physiological state is materially represented by a white cloth, known as...