What Can You Learn from "The 40 Year Old Virgin"?

By Melissa Balmer
Copyright © 2005, Seduction Insider.

“Don’t put the pussy on a pedestal” – advice from male characters in 'The 40 Year Old Virgin'

Okay, I have to be honest (as always) and let you know that when my publisher told me he wanted a review of “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and how it related to our advice here at Seduction Insider I inwardly cringed. You see, unlike most Americans I hate slapstick. As much as I love Cameron Diaz, I don’t love “There’s Something About Mary,” and I was really afraid that “The 40 Year Old Virgin” would not only be one silly gross out gag after another, but that it would have absolutely no witty insights into improving one’s love life.


I was wrong. Yes, this is definitely a bawdy physical comedy, and yes it’s totally a guy’s film, but it’s also a charming, funny movie that shows good dating tips while many of the male characters give lousy ones. No, it’s not perfect (like most movies these days it has scenes that make no real sense) but it has a heart of gold, and takes a very humorous look at what odd fears and behaviors we humans have about love and sex.

The biggest message (and something we’re always doing our best to warn you about at Seduction Insider) is that if you don’t take concious control of your life, life will take control of you – and it probably won’t be a heck of a lot of fun. That’s exactly what’s happened to the main character Andy (our hero) in “The 40 Year Old Virgin.” Played with almost unrecognizably uptight, straight-laced nerdiness by Steve Carroll of The Office fame (who also co-wrote the movie) our hero Andy Stitzer is in very sad shape sexually and romantically.

When we meet Andy he’s a very kind, attractive (though he has no clue), fit man who’s nice to his elderly neighbors (they have a standing date to watch “Survivor” and totally conscientious about his job as a technician at a local electronics store. He’s also emotionally stuck in about 8th or 9th grade. He rides a bike to work and has never learned to drive; his apartment (though neat and tidy) is like a toy store – full of action figures, action figure posters, and a chair specially made to make the supreme video game experience possible. He has absolutely no social life and spends his free time playing the tuba, exercising on his home gym equipment, and playing online games. He is stiff and shy to the point that you’re afraid one of his raging morning erections might just snap off.

We laugh at Andy because he represents far too much truth to ignore – we all feel shy and awkward and stuck in the past at times. And many of us, like Andy, live there all the time while progress zooms on around us.

Invited to join his male co-workers (who usually ignore him but who are desperate for enough players) in a game of poker after work one night Andy impetuously says “yes” and his life is never the same. Once it slips that he’s a virgin (he gives himself away when he refers to a woman’s breast as feeling like a bag of sand) his male co-workers take his virginity as a challenge that they’re going to help him conquer.

Andy (and rightfully so with this oddball group of new friends) is full of even more fear and trepidation at the prospect, but they don’t take “no” for an answer. Suddenly Andy is at the mercy of the advice of three men who, though they aren’t virgins, aren’t really doing so much better in the romance or sex department than he is. Which is one of the movies wisest ploys. We’re a society that loves to give advice, but most of us aren’t that great at using that good advice ourselves.

One of the second wisest points the movie makes is that whenever we fear something we give it huge power over our lives. In Andy’s case he’s done his best to shut sex out of his life because his few possible sexual encounters in the past have ended in hilarious disasters. His male co-workers share that he can’t keep putting the pussy on a pedestal. They’re right. Andy, like many men, has confused respecting women with being terrified of the mysteries of sex, and the almost overwhelming allure the female body has for heterosexual men. Respecting women is great, but trying to shut down your libido is just going to backfire on you.

Go ahead and own that you’re a man and that your DNA has been wired to want to immerse yourself in the pleasures the female body can provide. Just don’t be an ignorant, selfish jerk about it and only be about your own pleasure.

But back to our movie.

At the same time Andy is being dragged out to nightclubs and various singles situations by his male co-workers who give him the old adage of “needing to bag babes that are easy in order to test the waters,” he also meets the beautiful, hip, but almost as nervous as he is Trish (the gorgeous Catherine Keener who seemed to burst on the scene out of nowhere in “Being John Malkovitch”) when he’s forced to work the sales floor at his job. Trish, like many women, has sewn her wild oats (she’s not only a mother of three, her oldest daughter has a baby making Trish one hot grandma) and is finally ready to give a nice man a chance when she meets Andy.

What the movie does a good job of showing is that Andy has some great qualities going for him that women find very attractive – he’s got a good sense of humor, he gets along brilliantly with her children, he’s willing to engage and relate to her kids on their own level, he’s a great cook, and reliable. Trish, like many women, is willing to over look his toy collection and his inability to drive because Andy knows how to show up and “be there.” They have fun together.

And I hate to say it, but I feel I have to – if Andy wasn’t really a diamond in the rough – that is in great shape, attractive but doesn’t know it, funny but not trying to be, and very neat and tidy, Trish would not be so into him – these are points that many many single men just don’t get. If they really feel great, hot women should love them “as is” even when their “as is” is in far less desirable shape then the woman’s (and I mean not only physically, but mentally, financially and emotionally as well). But to be fair there are many single women who feel the same thing.

In the end it isn’t Andy’s virginity that’s a problem to Trish at all – but the fact that he’s allowed himself to be frozen in time. And that’s the same for most of us, the issue that we give so much power to, that which keeps us from jumping in and living the life we dream of, is really all in our head.

And yes, the movie does have a happy ending, and Andy does finally lose his virginity, but you’ll have to go see the movie to find out how.

;-)