Sex In The Public Square - Sex Symbols: Condoms Go Bollywood - Comments

sometimes silly works

tracya — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:47:58 -0700

i saw this yesterday and was going to post it myself. i never had much interaction with the indian community until i moved to the UK, now i live in the curry capitol of england!

i think it's a huge step forward for the indian government to address a growing problem. asian culture suffers from a huge dichotomy, in that sex is openly repressed in dress and actions. we are talking about a culture where males and females are clearly separate, women are limited in many roles and punished severely for minor infractions. they still have honour killings, even here in england. yet men are obviously able to indulge in sex, most likely with prostitutes.

i agree the video looks silly to us but it's clearly designed to appeal to a specific segment of indian culture, in that sense it does work. similar to having a rap singer promoting safe sex in LA, NYC or chicago.

Scary, isn't it?

Elizabeth — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:27:17 -0700

But I actually do pretty well at 6ish if I've had some coffee. Of course the amount of coffee I'm consuming seems to be increasing....

I'd really love to expand the "Sex Symbols" idea ... and not all posts have to use that in their titles, either. Just so long as they use it as a tag so that they get collected on the Sex Symbols page.

By the way, the tune is still stuck in my head!

You wrote all that at 6:23?

Chris — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:37:56 -0700

You wrote all that at 6:23? Oy. But yes, the idea of putting it up in the "Sex Symbols" is a good one.

Corny is a state of mind

Elizabeth — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 03:23:54 -0700

Great find, Chris! My first thought upon seeing the men dancing in cardboard cutouts of condoms was, "yes, corny," and then I noticed that the piece was about 6 minutes long and thought, "wow, this must be serious!" I was surprised by how thorough it was. In the US we'd have tried for a 60 second PSA I bet. This one covered all the main reasons for use including pregnancy prevention (unlike the spots that two networks in the US rejected because they went beyond disease prevention and addressed pregnancy). It showed the proper way to put on and dispose of a condom. Until the last two minutes there were no women in the spot, which I thought was interesting. i'm out of the loop in terms of US commercials but do we make condom commercials that don't rely on sexy women? Oh, and speaking of women, this spot also mentioned condoms for women. And it mentioned gay people (though it did make it seem like gay people are the only ones who have anal sex).

One sign of how effective such a PSA might be? I've still got the tune running through my head. I imagine that later this afternoon I'll be bopping down the hallway at work with the words "I am the condom friend ever useful to you," scrolling through my brain.

An aside: I think we should put a copy of this in the Sex Symbols. It's easily done if we just add the term Sex Symbol as a tag on the post. What do you think? Then it will remain here on your blog but will also show up there. (There is not a place iwth a menu listing yet but it can be found at "http://sexinthepublicsquare.org/SexSymbols" and its that place where I hope to have short pieces that raise discussions on cultural artifacts connected to sex. T-shirts, ads, billboards, objects ... whatever.) What do you think?

Sex Symbols: Condoms Go Bollywood

Chris — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:18:04 -0700

"I am the condom friend ever useful to you."

Below is a public service announcement encouraging Indians to use Nirodh condoms, a brand distributed by the Indian Department of Family Welfare. As silly and cheesy as it looks, my first thought looking at it is that I wish we could get condom ads this good in the United States.