"Spit-in water." "De-petaled flower." "A chewed piece of gum."

The youth of my generation know these phrases by heart.

These were the labels placed on you if you didn't follow the rules.

The rules were these:

• Don't wear anything that could cause your male friends to stumble. Scratch that, don't wear anything but denim skirts and long-sleeve shirts, even when at the pool.
• Don't touch before you get married. No kissing, no hugging, no hand-holding.
• Don't have a crush. If you have a crush on someone before you're married, you cannot give your husband your whole heart. You'll have an emotional STD that will infect your marriage! You should really just marry your first crush.
• Don't have problems. Good Christians don't have problems.
• Don't ask questions. Good Christians don't do that, either.
• Don't fight back. If a man hurts you, then you led him on and deserved it.
• Don't. Don't. Don't.

As long as we followed the rules, everything was supposed to be great. And everything was great. Until it wasn't.

They wanted to safeguard our sexuality. Instead, they broke it.

They wanted us to be spotless before God. Instead, they drove us away from him.

The Scarlet Virgins is a memoir of one woman's journey through the Christian Purity Movement. It wrestles with the experiences and temptations of her and her peers, including the temptation of apostasy, addiction, alcoholism, anorexia, depression, self-harm, and suicide. The author seeks to restore the truth to broken souls: It is Christ who makes us pure.