Alina Percea's virginity auction

“Clearly, virginity doesn’t have a set rate,” said Tracy Clark-Flory in Salon. Alina Percea, an 18-year-old Romanian woman, was so inspired by the $3.8 million online auction bid for the virginity of young American Natalie Dylan, that she decided to put her own innocence on the block to help pay for college. But the result wasn’t pretty—the high bid was only $13,000, and after the transaction Percea headed to a pharmacy for a morning-after pill, because unsafe sex was part of the deal.

How romantic, said Wendy Atterberry in The Frisky. At least the 45-year-old Italian businessman who submitted the winning bid flew Alina Percea to Venice for the deal's completion. Percea’s now “dishing all the details,” and it sounds even more awkward than most first-sex experiences. The surprise ending? “Although the money raised fell short of the $75,000 she hoped to earn," Percea would like to see the man again. And she said, "Next time I won't make him pay!"

Whenever one of these sell-my-virginity stories appears, said Anneli Rufus in The Huffington Post, "we're horrified. We're morally outraged." We want to talk sense into these women. But "it's not as if we who never sold ours but gave it free to college guys who didn't wash their hair have memories worth treasuring." Maybe the online virginity auction is "the initiation rite of a new age."

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