If you’ve watched TV in the past week, specifically MTV, you’ve probably noticed something outside the normal ads for Teen Wolf or toothpaste.
Trojan and MTV have partnered to create a media campaign, complete with condom commercials — consider this my petition to call them “condommercials” henceforth — and safer sex information.
The series of commercials features a couple discussing their relationship level with each other and with friends. They’re in the leaving-a-toothbrush-at-my-apartment zone, the let’s-try-new-things-together zone and the “Co Zone,” short for condom zone.
Basically, they love condoms, and you should, too.
The goal of the campaign, according to a New York Times article, is “to encourage couples who see each other regularly to use condoms each time they have sex.”
The campaign launched around the same time Trojan released results to a new condom survey, which only serves as more evidence as to why you should wrap it before you tap it.
According to the survey, only 35 percent of young adults ages 18 to 34 reported always using a condom, even though 80 percent said condom use is important.
Apparently, although young people believe condom use is important, their behaviors don’t seem to correspond with their beliefs. The 2009 GatorWell Sexual Health Student Survey reported that only 31.7 percent of sexually active UF students used a condom every time they had vaginal intercourse in the past year.
Trojan and MTV deserve praise for trying to create a fun and relatable campaign to increase condom use.
There’s still a big stigma around condoms, and maybe this campaign will help reduce it.
There are a number of obstacles toward advertising condoms and advocating their use. Some condom companies have been banned from advertising on Twitter, for example. I personally experienced the stigma against condoms when I was advised by a representative with Student Activities and Involvement against distributing them on campus.
People — particularly horny young adults, MTV’s major target audience — are going to have sex. It’s inevitable.
Promoting condom use in popular media, exposing people to safer sex options and, most importantly, actually giving them access to contraceptives isn’t going to make them have more sex. It will simply increase the likelihood that they engage in safer sex.
Coming from someone who always carries at least two condoms on my person — hey, sometimes one just isn’t enough — I don’t get the fuss about using a condom.
Even if you and your partner aren’t worried about preventing pregnancy — maybe you use a hormonal form of contraceptive for that — condoms still act as a barrier method to protect against sexually transmitted infections.
One in two sexually active young people will contract an STI by the age of 25. If that doesn’t make you want to run to CVS and pick up a box of condoms, I don’t know what will.
If you’re worried about the expense of purchasing a condom supply, UF students have a number of resources for free contraceptives.Condoms are offered at the Student Health Care Center building, around campus at GatorWell Health Huts and at the Planned Parenthood on 13th Street. That’s just one more reason to love being a Gator.
If you insist on only using condoms that you purchase yourself from the store, the return on investment is still pretty good — about 114,000 percent in comparison to raising a child, according to GQ.
So if you and your partner are already in the eat-cold-pizza-in-bed-together zone, the hold-my-hair-back-while-I-puke-at-this-party zone, or the I-haven’t-stayed-at-my-own-apartment-in-weeks zone, consider taking a cue from Trojan and entering the condom zone, too.
Robyn Smith is a UF journalism junior. Her columns appear on Fridays.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 9/19/2014 under the headline "Take your relationship to the condom zone"]
