Condoms in the Media

There haven’t always been tongue-in-cheek ads about condoms in the media. It wasn’t too long ago that print, radio, or television ads for condoms were extremely rare, or flat out banned. Even though condoms promote safer sexual activity, they’ve been shunned and silenced for too long when it comes to marketing and open discussion in media. This has also impacted accessibility to certain sexual wellness products. In the US, only one in three men say they use condoms some of the time, and only 19 percent use a condom every time. We need to get the message out to all so it becomes normalized to speak of sexual wellness no differently than any other wellness.

Media and Ads

It wasn’t until December of 1986 that The New York Times issued a statement saying it would re-examine its ban on prophylactic and contraceptive ads due to the “threat posed by the AIDS epidemic.”

Early in the following year, the NYT would run an ad for DKT International, but insisted they change the ad to read “condoms by mail” and not “contraceptives by mail,” believing this would offend readers less by making it more focused on disease prevention and not birth control.

Pop Culture

There were definite pop culture pushes for condoms and sexual health in general, and no one was more prominent in this promotion than the artist Keith Haring. Keith was a New York based artist who became known for creating his art in public spaces, especially in the subway. Keith was very committed to spreading the word of safer sex, using condoms, and disease prevention through his art. He found a “multicultural urban community with its own expressive vocabulary; a lively environment in which to explore his gay identity’ in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. And it became his mural. Literally. He used his art as his voice in his social activism promoting safer sex practices and AIDS awareness.

Media Has a Ways to Go

Even today, there are censors and additional hoops that are required to jump through to promote safer sex and sexual wellness. In Canada, condoms that don’t fall under the “traditional” male condom classification are considered a class III medical device, therefore they cannot be sold via retailers such as Amazon. The FC-2 Female condoms and Harmony Dams are both Class III medical devices. Advertising platform giants such as Facebook or Instagram don’t allow the promotion of condoms or sexual wellness products, and will not promote any product associated with it. Sadly, as so many people use these media platforms for information sharing, a vast marketing social media platform remains untapped.

Media is Communication We Need

Social media and all media platforms reach so many people. It is imperative we continue to evolve in our conversations about safer sex practices. Being able to talk about condoms in the media has come a ways in the last 40 years, but it’s still apparent that there needs to be more work done. Safer sex is better sex, and should continue to be the topic of conversation until safer sex is the norm.