This article is based on an ethnographic research carried out at a public school in Rio de Janeiro, from August 2002 to July 2003. It analyzes how girls idealize their first sexual intercourse and how the school refers to this aspect of the adolescents' life and intervenes in it. This phase is accompanied with a series of concerns and plans, especially for the girls, who demonstrate to ascribe less value to virginity than to their first sexual intercourse. On the level of explicit intentions, they reproduce school teachings that prescribe not only the use of preservatives, but also a certain ideal type of relationship between boys and girls. Thus, certain limitations of school intervention are perceived.
Sexuality; Gender; School; Sexual Education; Adolescence