Our buddies over at the Good Men Project, as usual, found a nutty father issue and dove into the topic like it ain’t no thang. This time, the issue is Purity Balls – which, before clicking on the article, I thought was going to be about a personal cleanser for men.

Turns out that as usual, I’m wrong, and it’s something more serious.

The Purity Ball, as GMP‘s Katie Baker explains, is a ceremony that the creators intend to be as much for the father as it is for the daughter. It is supposed to be an empowering way for the father to talk about sex (or no-sex) with his daughter, and for the daughter to feel protected by her father. It all makes sense when you think about the ceremony more as a party to teach daughters that their fathers love them and want them to know that they’re valuable enough to make the right decisions in dealing with their bodies. It makes no sense, however, when the father-participants use this as the only platform to be open with their daughters about sex, love (and rock-and-roll).

Yet, as Baker finds out, solving age-old abstinence issues is not as simple as a daughter buying a beautiful ball gown and dancing with her dad. Baker talks to the co-creator of the Purity Ball, Randy Wilson, learning that there’s a fine line between Purity Balls and Purity nuts. But one thing’s clear – these events, though well-meaning, don’t seem to keep daughters away from balls or nuts.

(picture caption affectionately taken from Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy“)

Sauce: Good Men Project

Ten years ago, I was just coming out of college. I was single, writing reviews for WYWS Magazine (street cred for those that remember it), and sleeping from 7am until 3pm after long nights of video gaming. I had, at that time, two arcade sticks for my game systems. Any punk that challenged me in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 (for the Dreamcast!) was going to get their ass handed to them in a cold rain of shinkuu-hadokens.

Today, I’ve got the arcade sticks packed away, in favor of my kid’s toys. My game systems are inside of a locked television stand. WYWS went out of business years ago and the editor-in-chief lost my number. I have a day job. A wife. A kid. I no longer go to sleep at 7am; I get up for work at 6:45am.

Oh, and Marvel Vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds hit the streets this week.

No way my wife would let me couch-it for a week, use up my vacation hours from work, and slam buttons on a joystick all night, just to figure out if MvC3 is appropriate for kids to play. But a guy can dream.