New book about Purity Balls attempts to defend and legitimize the practice. Yeah, good luck with that.

So the book by David Magnusson, called simply "Purity" contains photographs of fathers standing with their daughters in the kind of poses that would make the hair on Chris Hansen's stand straight up, and an explanation from the author about why our perceptions are all wrong.

Here is a taste: 

“When I first heard about the Purity Balls I imagined American fathers terrified of anything that might hurt their daughters or their families honor. But as I learnt more, I understood that the fathers, like all parents, simply wanted to protect the ones that they love – in the best way they know how. It was also often the girls themselves that had taken the initiative to attend the balls. They had made their decisions out of their own conviction and faith, in many cases with fathers who didn’t know what a Purity Ball was before first being invited by their daughters. 

The more I learned, the more I was surprised that I had been so quick to judge people I knew so little about. I was struck by the idea that what set us apart wasn’t anything more than how we had been influenced by the culture we grew up in and the values it had instilled in us. In Purity I wanted to create portraits so beautiful that the girls and their fathers could be proud of the pictures in the same way they are proud of their decisions – while someone from a different background might see an entirely different story in the very same photographs. 

To me, Purity is about how we are shaped by the society in which we grow up and how we interpret the world through the values we incorporate as our own.”

Uh huh. Well I guess you can blame my background but I am not picking up anything sweet, or nurturing from the photos.

And what I am picking up is more about obsessive control and an unnatural interest in a young girl's sexuality. Must be my background.

(H/T to The Godless Place.)