TARA McCarthy has been dubbed a professional virgin. The media frenzy in the US that followed the publication of her book, Been There, Haven't Done That.
A Virgin's Memoir, was reminiscent of the reaction to the Hugh Grant/Divine Brown debacle.
She goes out on a date and it makes the news. Tara, you see, is 25 years old and has never had sexual intercourse.
There is a scene in a recent episode of The Simpsons where one adult character reveals his virginal status. The reaction of his confidants utter revulsion and disgust is both hilarious and perceptive, illustrating how in a society increasingly preoccupied with sex, abstention has come to be viewed as sexual deviance.
McCarthy may relate to this. She says she wrote her book so that "after feeling like a freak for a long time other freaks out there could read this book and get some perspective on things
While publicising her book she has been called everything from "neurotic" to "insufferably smug and egotistical". Some have dismissed her for not being sufficiently profound. One critic said her story should have been included in Naomi Wolf's latest book where "it would have made an interesting footnote".
For everyone who hails her as a heroine there are others yelling "Hypocrite". As McCarthy mused recently, "Sex isn't big news. You're probably as surprised as I am by the extent to which not having it is".
Gobsmacked, actually. So what is with Tara? Is it, as one of the less kind commentators have suggested, that she is not appealing enough to entice the opposite sex into her bed? Not likely. She is an attractive, talented, intelligent and witty young woman.
Perhaps she had a difficult childhood, undergoing some-life-altering trauma which led her to eschew premarital sex. No. Reading her book, it is clear that she was brought up in a close-knit Irish-American family where the biggest traumas involved securing her father's permission to attend all- girl slumber parties.
The truth is altogether more mundane. Tara McCarthy happens to associate sex with love and a lifelong commitment. She has not yet found the person with whom she could make this commitment. So, she has not yet had sex.
Well, not technically anyway. Some people don't agree that Tara is a virgin. She says herself she has done everything other than intercourse - "I've been touched, kissed, poked, prodded, rubbed, caressed, sucked, licked, bitten, you name it."
"They say you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince," she writes. "And I am living proof."
She was born in 1971 in Manhattan and attended St Stephen's Girls Academy, a strict Catholic school. She excelled as a student and went on to study at Harvard University from where she graduated four years ago.
Passionately interested in music, she travelled to Dublin on graduating in search of her roots and "landed a job at a music magazine". Now based in New York, she is still a columnist with Hot Press while contributing to a variety of magazines in the United States.
She was brought up in a Catholic household, but while she admits to being influenced by her religion it has not been her sole driving force. What appears to have been the single biggest factor in her attitude towards sex had nothing to do with spirituality.
"Maybe my decision was made for me to a certain extent when my mother stood at our kitchen sink peeling a cucumber of all things and told 10-year- old me that sex is something that two people who really love each other do together," she writes.
Colleagues do not remember her as the prudish type. "Tara was as outgoing and as interested in the opposite sex as anyone else, says one. "It was only when she began writing the book and telling us what it was about that we found out about her decision. I thought it was a bit odd."
Odd or not, the book has turned her into a household phenomenon in the US. Talk show host Jay Leno cracks jokes about her on The Tonight Show. A clause in her contract with Warner Books had stated she should be virginal in "mind and body and spirit". When the book was published and the contract expired, hacks waited to see whether her first date would be The One.
He wasn't. And Tara isn't the only one worshipping at the altar of chastity. Recently we have seen the emergence of a curious condition, Virgin Cool. With sex staring out at them from every possible medium, remaining celibate has become a form of rebellion for the current generation.
Ronan from Boyzone is a celebrated virgin and American teen heart throbs Hanson have also admitted to being sexually pure. In America they have an organisation called True Love Waits - young girls and boys vow to abstain from premarital sex. Even if you have already taken the plunge you can become what they call a born-again virgin.
Meanwhile, in this country there are dozens of consecrated virgins (lay people who take a Catholic vow of virginity) totally committed to saying No.
And then there is Tara McCarthy, who has written a book which opens a window on a subject not often aired. Much of the ensuing debate has concentrated on irrelevancies and missed her point, she says.
"The traditional definition of virginity one that associates never having had intercourse with being pure and proper is pretty outdated. And about time."
The book has been published in the US, Germany and, for some reason, Korea and is "selling well", says her publicist. Writing in the current issue of Hot Press, McCarthy says she has been told the book represents a "possible goldmine". Her current beau, she says, is the picture of understanding.
"If I were a guy I'd probably stick around, too," she writes.