[2] Critics of the balls argue that they encourage and engrave dysfunctional expectations in the minds of the young women, making them vulnerable to believing their only value is as property, and teaching them that they must subjugate their own mental, physical, and emotional well-being to the needs of potentially or actually abusive partners.
[7] In 2012, the New York Times concluded "there is little hard evidence that purity balls have spread much beyond Colorado Springs" in spite of claims that the events are widespread.
[12] Although the chastity pledges differ between organizations, the purity balls held by the creator of the concept, Pastor Randy Wilson, follow a symbolic ritual.
"[10] In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Wilson said that purity balls encourage fathers to participate in their daughters' lives, provide guidance, and teach coping skills.
[2] Glamour claims that National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data supports the conclusion that teenagers making virginity pledges, including those promulgated through purity balls, usually do not adhere to the required standard of chastity, and are less prepared to utilize safe sex practices to mitigate the risks when engaging in sexual activity.
Furthermore, Glamour states that the percentage of teenagers in a given area who have made virginity pledges is positively correlated with the frequency with which sexually transmitted infections occur.
[17] Jennifer Freitag, a Southern Illinois University Carbondale doctoral student, argues that, from a feminist perspective, the purity ball ritual can be considered sexist discrimination as it rarely applies to men, and ignores whether women desire heterosexual marriages.
Freitag further asserts that the purity balls and virginity pledges give women fewer opportunities to explore their future mates and presume that the girls will marry men, ignoring lesbianism, bisexuality, and transsexualism.
However, she has expressed concerns that purity balls are pervaded by a preoccupation with physical chastity which may inadvertently imbue the social construction of girls attending them with erotic attributes.
She claims that this "sexualizing" shifts attention away from maintenance of the internal moral and spiritual virtue which she believes is required by the tenets of the Christian faith.