Broadsheet

Planned Parenthood's condoms for women

I went to college in the early '90s, when safe sex was a fashion statement. Even dorm mothers were packing Trojans back then. Over the years, that changed. As single women, we've become dangerously casual about whether our partners use protection. A new report finds that "only 30 percent of single women with multiple partners have used condoms in the past month, and only 20 percent reported 'always' using them over the past year." I don't need to explain why this is a bad thing.

So Planned Parenthood has introduced a line of condoms marketed to women, called Proper Attire, "designed with sexually active, stylish women in mind." The boxes come decorated with fig leaves and cutesy dots and look more or less like something you might find in the Jonathan Adler home furnishings line at Target. They also cost $6, which is $6 more than I remember Planned Parenthood condoms costing. (With the hits to Planned Parenthood funding, however, we can hardly blame the organization for trying to make a buck.)

The product is an attempt to make condoms more fashionable to a certain demographic. As Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Diane Quest explains in the U.S. News article, "Some women feel embarrassed about carrying condoms -- like it's a social taboo. We wanted to make them stylish and fun for women to carry."

If this kind of cloying marketing to women makes you grumpy, you're not alone. As Maria Mercedes Lara wrote on Jezebel, "it's clear they are simply killing one stereotype with another by playing to women's materialism and touting the product as the 'must-have accessory of the season.'"

The whole thing is a little Carrie Bradshaw for me. But I find it difficult to dog a campaign that's really only designed to do two things: Get more women to buy condoms and raise money for Planned Parenthood. The fig leaves and dots are kinda stupid. But hell, put some monkeys and kitty cats on those condom boxes, and I'll buy a dozen.

Britain to ban sexist ads?
That's what the media implies, but sexism isn't dead just yet.
What do we want? Firepits!
A Texas real estate developer actually thinks to ask women what they want in a mall.
Your daily Palin
She's still dominating the lady news, so we're still writing about her.
DNA testing your fiancé?
Coverage of a new study blames a single gene for marital discord. The researchers disagree.

Recent Posts

What do we want? Firepits!
A Texas real estate developer actually thinks to ask women what they want in a mall.
Your daily Palin
She's still dominating the lady news, so we're still writing about her.
DNA testing your fiancé?
Coverage of a new study blames a single gene for marital discord. The researchers disagree.

Full Archive

RSS Feed

Posts by date

September 2008
SuMoTuWeThFrSa
123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
282930

Tips or Comments?

E-mail us at broadsheet@salon.com.