Virgin or not?
Many teen girls worry that if they use tampons, they will no longer
be virgins. The truth is, a virgin is someone who has never had
sexual intercourse. Is inserting a tampon the same thing as having
sex? Absolutely not!
So where does this question come from? Females who are virgins
usually have a hymen, a piece of skin-like tissue that stretches
partly across the opening of the vagina. Some girls have thicker
hymens than others, and sometimes girls are born without a hymen. A
female may bleed slightly the first time she has sexual intercourse
because the hymen permanently breaks.
It is possible that inserting a tampon will tear the hymen, but
that is usually not the case. The hymen usually covers only part of
the opening to the vagina. (If the hymen covered the entire vagina,
a girl wouldn't be able to tell if she was having a period because
the menstrual blood wouldn't be able to normally flow outside of
the body.) And even if a tampon does break the hymen, a teen is
still a virgin until she has had sexual intercourse.
