I watched this on +1 last night. I agree with a lot of what has been said here. It was creepy. It was patriarchal. It did feel inappropriate for girls of 11 or whatever to be thinking about 'purity' and saving themselves. They should just be playing at that age.
But I have mixed feelings about it. With modern media, the world is a very sexualised place and some naive girls do need some protection. (Ask most women the question and they will admit that someone (usually an older man) at some point, manipulated and took sexual advantage of them without it being actual coercion.) Sometimes parents do know best but, these days, it is expected for children to rebel and make their own choices and for parents to let go and not interfere. Virginity is no longer valued and yet some women are still seen as 'slags' and some men still cannot handle the idea of their girlfriend having had a sexual history with other men. There are still double standards. I like to see myself as a feminist but not every woman has benefited from 'sexual emancipation'. It does not suit all women and it sometimes seems like it has benefited men more than women. That women get the raw end of the deal and that our status has been diminished by it rather than liberated.
One thing that struck me was that the attention these Dads paid to their daughters could (if it is handled correctly) have the effect of helping their self-esteem. I found the large family that ran the purity ball creepy and a bit Stepfordy but when the father (whose hair looked like a wig because he had no sideburns) said about girls not believing they are beautiful, not having a lot of self-worth, I could sympathise with what he was saying. The 'blessing' ceremony that they do each week is weird (especially as he says the same about each child apart from the meaning of their name) but it is a formalised way of telling each child that they are important. He said he had to keep telling them until they believed it.
It is true that children need this help sometimes. Life is so complicated now that it is easy to lose your way. Girls' first relationship with the opposite gender is usually with their Dad and it is important that it is a good relationship, that makes them feel valued and secure and respected as a female person. I agree with this aspect of what these people are doing.
In our modern world, some Dads are cuddly and intimate with their girl children when they are small but then, because of taboos, back off when they are teenagers and can become a bit distant, leaving the bulk of the care up to the mother during the teenage years. I am sure there are those of you that would say this wasn't true for you, that your Dad was your best friend. But I believe I was affected by this. It was a difficult time for my family and then my Mum died and my Dad became very withdrawn and depressed for several years. I have gone on to have low self-esteem, to be very co-dependent on men and have ended up as a single mother after a failed relationship. It cannot all be put down to a lack of close relationship between my father and me at that time, but I think it was a factor.
My dd is now growing up without her father (who has declined to be in her life thus far) and I am worried about what effect this will have on her in terms of relationships with men in the future. The statistics indicate that she is likely to be affected to some degree unless I can provide her with another, or more than one, good, consistent encouraging male role models.
So what I want to say is that, although a lot of aspects of this purity movement, and the way it is formalised, do seem a bit creepy, I can sympathise/empathise with some of the aims. It would be wrong to force someone to marry a person of the father's choice, it would be wrong to reject a child because they refuse to go along with your will, but it is good to teach children that they have value in themselves (not just in terms of what they achieve or how sexually attractive they are) and that sexuality and love are part of that value and not to be wasted or abused. Because sexuality and love are very important to our self-esteem, especially in our teenage years and 20s, and experimentation with (sexual) relationships does not always benefit us or make us feel good about ourselves.
There are, of course, other ways of teaching children to value themselves, other ways of promoting self-esteem and self-respect (than having strange balls where girls take pledges and dance with their fathers).
Very long-winded and waffly as usual but the programme did strike a chord with me.