AN American comedian named Tina Fey recently joked that the next big reality television show would be called Vagina Auction. She had intended to poke fun at the desperate lengths to which television producers are prepared to go to excite an audience increasingly jaded by saturation reality programming.

Fey never bargained for Sarah DiMuro, a 29-year-old New Yorker who is attempting to turn what many women regard as one of the most private and intimate moments of their life into a public spectacle.

DiMuro claims to be a virgin. She has launched an internet search for a man who can help her to lose her virginity before her 30th birthday on November 7.

She has not yet earned her own reality show, but her search has been reported by several television networks and is being sponsored by a leading American women’s magazine that has stirred both feminist and conservative rage by inviting its readers to “help hook her up”.

While some critics have dismissed DiMuro as an attention-seeking wannabe, others have interpreted her antics as a dire harbinger of future entertainment trends.

“A woman turning 30, who should be entering a new stage of adulthood, is being infantilised for the entertainment of strangers,” complained Dawn Eden, a New York newspaper executive and author of The Thrill of the Chaste, a book advocating teenage abstinence.

DiMuro is a slim blonde who at first sight seems unlikely to have preserved her chastity into her 30th year. Yet she claimed last week to have been a “complete and utter dork” as a teenager.

Raised as a Catholic in a well-to-do New England family, she said she never kissed a boy until she was 23 because she attended an all-female university. In Manhattan she lives in a women-only residential hotel. “I never went all the way before because I didn’t feel right,” she said.

Whether or not she is telling the truth, the American media’s willingness to promote her story has sparked an internet backlash at DiMuro for her shameless self-promotion and at Jane magazine for acting as her “pimp”.

“So you think your sex life is frustrating?” the magazine asked readers in its current issue. “Meet Sarah, who’s asked us to help her lose her virginity . . . naturally, we’d like to assist if we can.” The magazine encouraged readers to vote for potential candidates who are then selected to go out on dates with DiMuro.

The popular Metadish website urged New York men to “refuse to have sex with her”. Another blogger inquired: “Is this a magazine specifically aimed at immature airheads with no self-respect?” Many others echoed one online question: “What kind of 29-year-old virgin suddenly decides to lose her virginity by soliciting strangers in a magazine?”

DiMuro said last week that she had no regrets about going public with her sexual status. She has signed an affidavit attesting to her virginity and says she is ready to be medically examined if necessary.

“I never thought I’d be approaching my 30th birthday as a virgin who hasn’t found a meaningful connection, but here I am,” she said.

The virginity fuss follows a series of recent upsets over the increasingly elastic standards of American network television. The latest season of the CBS Survivor series, featuring contestants isolated in remote locations, is already attracting controversy for segregating its teams on racial lines — whites v blacks, Hispanics and Asians. The Kansas City Star newspaper called it “the makings of shameful, destructive exploitation”.

The MTV UK network was recently criticised for its new series The Virgin Diaries, in which teenagers were given cameras to film themselves talking about sex. Critics complained that the show encourages teenagers to regard virginity as an embarrassment.

Even the harmless sounding BBC series How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? was criticised for turning auditions for the leading role in a production of The Sound of Music into a painful public spectacle. Trevor Nunn, the theatre director, complained that the programme’s emphasis on who got rejected was the “opposite” of theatre reality.

“I think that what these reality programmes rely on is the viewing public being witness to distress,” Nunn said. The NBC network has already snapped up the BBC idea for a similar series set on Broadway.

DiMuro’s venture may yet end in tears but for now she seems to be enjoying herself. Several men have already responded to questionnaires published on the Jane website. Asked about their performance in bed, one candidate responded “God” and another replied: “Incredible. I honestly have been thanked for bringing pleasure [that women] never dreamed possible.” A third said he was “very furry”.

Brandon Holley, Jane’s editor-in-chief, said that the magazine was happy to help with DiMuro’s search. “We’ll do what it takes to get the job done,” he said.

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