Ranging from sassy dialogue to black humour, these are one-minute comedies with a smart punchline. The Mother from Hell and the Spoiled Brat skits have [...]]]>
Make safe sex fun. By M. Sayagues
Ranging from sassy dialogue to black humour, these are one-minute comedies with a smart punchline. The Mother from Hell and the Spoiled Brat skits have a Borat-like humour. And who would have thought a condom ad from India would depict anal sex?
Click on the ad from Argentina even if you don’t speak Spanish. Everybody who has been a teenager will chuckle about these teens, their parents and their predicament. (Watch it here)
Laughing got me thinking about how seldom one sees humorous ads about condoms in English-speaking Southern Africa. I have seen some cool ads in Mozambique, though – I think there were Brazilian advisors involved. Where is the fun?
Most ads about condoms in Southern Africa are earnest, even boring, stressing safe sex, HIV prevention, responsibility. Few treat sex as an activity filled with desire, romance, anticipation, indecision, ambiguity, and pleasure.
Yes, for man, sex may be forced, violent, unwanted, unpleasant, too quick, too slow, or too risky.
A pretty condom carrying box. By M. Sayagues
But for many others, it is not. Ads should target different segments. If we want to attract the attention of the young instead of totally turning them off, ads must be cool.
It is a fine balancing act. About three years ago, the South African anti-AIDS campaign LoveLife published a monthly insert in major newspapers, called Uncut that tried so hard to be blasé it was borderline pornographic.
There is a distance from acknowledging that young people have sex to portraying teens dressed like hookers in positions suggesting group oral sex. Many parents threw Uncut straight away. My daughter, aged 14 then and no prude, thought it cheapened girls.
After many complaints and public debate, Uncut changed. It went overboard. Now it reads like a church teen newsletter, wholesome and boring.
It may be that the terrifying scale of the AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa inhibits ad campaign planners and donors from portraying safe sex as fun. Maybe it is fear of offending churches, politicians and parents. And talking about sex has traditionally been taboo.
Yet, to get young people to practice safe sex, condoms must become part of their sexual paraphernalia and discourse. A bit of humour helps.
So have a laugh and tell us which is your favourite!
Ad selection courtesy of Chris Well, a designer and sexual rights activist at Conversations for a Better World. Check out his website for teens and reproductive health: www.15andcounting
I was very pregnant and very happy. I lived in Rome, Italy, and I wanted a home birth.
I wanted music, soft light, friends, baby on my [...]]]>
Safe motherhood for all. By F. Beaumont.
My daughter Esmeralda turns 18 today. Like all parents, I am amazed at how time flies. Like all mothers, I get reminiscent about those days, 18 years ago.
I was very pregnant and very happy. I lived in Rome, Italy, and I wanted a home birth.
I wanted music, soft light, friends, baby on my stomach still attached by umbilical cord, no drugs, and no epidural. A birth by my own rules, not by a cold hospital’s.
I found a group specialized in home births – Il Melograno. Their package included ob-gyn and midwife, courses, support and, more importantly, a woman-friendly feel. A photographer from Marie Claire magazine would do a photo reportage on my happy home birth.
Our premise: pregnancy is neither a disease nor a disability. Pregnancy and birth have become over-medicalized; women should reclaim it from doctors overly fond of control and caesareans. My family, my colleagues and the baby’s father thought I was crazy. Home births are more common now but women still battle to extricate pregnancy and birth out of the hospital realm.
In Brazil, we recently lost a battle for a centre for natural birth in Rio de Janeiro.
Clueless mommy
In my case, at midnight, after 30 hours of labour, I was stuck at 6 cms dilatation – and exhausted. A home birth must be 100 percent natural, so the few drops of oxitocyn to trigger full dilation had to be administered in hospital, three blocks away. There I went. At 2am my daughter was born – and promptly taken away to the nursery.
At 5:30am a nurse literally dumped my baby girl in my arms and left. No instructions on how to feed, nothing. My midwife and friends were coming at 8 am. What to do? I had never been around a newborn. I was like Carrie Bradshaw in Season 2 of Sex and The City – domesticity and motherhood were not part of my landscape.
So there I was, baby on one hand, baby book on the other, trying to figure it out. This is the most ridiculous and pathetic image of modern motherhood, I thought. How did we end here, from birth as a group event to 6 AM loneliness in hospital?
Less than 24 hours later, against hospital rules, I signed waivers absolving doctors of any responsibility and checked myself out.
I went home and turned on the CD player. My daughter’s godmother had been listening to the Rolling Stones: “You can’t always get what you want”. I chuckled.
Two close friends, one in Windhoek and one in London, recently tried a home birth but ended in hospital, just like me. Still, we were happy to go through labour at home.
Meanwhile, many women struggle to have a safe birth – anywhere. About half a million women die in childbirth very year. There are not enough trained midwives to ensure a safe labour, whether at home or at a clinic,
Art by Nelly Romeo Alves, photo by E. Zimbres
At a conference on reproductive health in Berlin last week, the World Health Organisation reported that one woman dies every minute for lack of adequate pregnancy and birth services.
A cruel paradox: the world proffers to revere motherhood but does not make it safe and comfortable for mothers to give birth.
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