The Talk of the Town

A 22-year-old woman going by the name Natalie has been raising more than a few eyebrows because of the way she intends to pay for graduate school—by auctioning off her virginity. Since it is against the law to sell sex in most of the country, Natalie is going through a legal brothel in Nevada and says she is willing to undergo a physical exam to prove that she is a virgin. So far, the bidding is up to $1 million.

Natalie is on the phone to explain why she made this controversial decision. "I was conducting premature research for my upcoming thesis, and I really wanted to delve into a topic that's really been, in a sense, very untouched," she says. "I wanted to study the dichotomous nature between virginity and prostitution." She says the idea came to her after reading about a Peruvian woman who made $1.5 million after putting her virginity up for sale. "I decided not to just theoretically study this, but implement it practically into my own life," she says.

Although Natalie says her experiment started out as research, she does not deny that money plays a major role. "Absolutely, that is only one of my primary factors," she says. "I would love to use all this money to make some great investments, and who wouldn't want financial stability?"

Natalie says she is under no contractual obligations and will have a say in which—if any—person she chooses. "It's not set up like an eBay auction; I have complete control," she says.