Elise’s Guide to Summer Sexual Safety

The lazy days of summer are upon us. Finally the time to relax, have fun and travel is in full swing. But for many teens and young adults, summer can also be a time to turn off the thinking skills demanded of them during the school year. This week, I want to share with you how to enjoy some summer lovin’ while keeping those thinking skills on.




Stay Focused and Aware

It’s no secret that alcohol lowers inhibitions, and that includes inhibitions about engaging in sexual activity. Although risk taking doesn’t discriminate, alcohol related risk taking is the greatest threat to people ages 18-24. According to a government survey, in 2010, 400,000 students between the ages of 18 and 24 reported having unprotected sex due to alcohol consumption. Having unprotected sex is an activity that shouldn’t be on anyone’s summer-fun list. Failing to use a condom will increase the risk of contracting an STD, as well as increase the risk of pregnancy. But the risks don’t stop there; alcohol consumption increases the risk for sexual assault and date rape as well. 100,000 of those 400,000 students reported that at they were too intoxicated to remember if they consented to sex at least one time. These numbers are shocking. Take every precaution possible to not be part of the statistics. Be smart, be safe and always be in control of your choices.

Safety Tip: When going out this summer always carry a condom and always stick with friends. If you’re around people that care about you, your chances of going through with a bad decision are lower.

Stay Out of the Water

If you’re going on a tropical vacation or simply sitting poolside in the backyard, summer can make couples have the urge to get “adventurous.” Fantasies about making love under a waterfall or having a steamy session in the hot tub may sound wonderful, but the condom sliding off or breaking isn’t quite so romantic. When using a condom for sexual activity in water, any water-based or even natural lubricant will be washed away, making friction a bigger issue. If there is not enough lubricant, the condom is at a greater risk of breaking; making you or your partner at greater risk of contracting an STD or becoming pregnant. In addition, if at any point water seeps in between the condom and the penis (which can happen if the penis loses erection even for a second), the condom could slide off and you may not even be aware of it. So lip-lock in the ocean all you want, but make sure to take it to shore when it gets hot and heavy.

Safety Tip: Using a condom is better than not using one at all. If you and your honey are stranded at sea from a terrible boat crash this summer, take extra precautions: put the condom on outside of the water and use a silicon based lubricant.

Don’t get Lazy

They don’t call it the “lazy days of summer” for nothing. When the weather is hot, it’s easier to make excuses or cancel appointments to go outside instead. In order to stay on top of your sexual health, get to the gynecologist or your family physician sooner rather than later. Get tested and stock up on condoms or birth control pills before you leave for that three week vacation. If you can’t afford protection, your local Planned Parenthood has got you covered, literally.

Safety Tip: Write a to-do list and make getting tested and having protection number one. Cross it off when you’ve done it and then have a safe, fun, memorable summer!

Elise
PPRSR Marketing Intern

Newest accessory: Condom holders aren't just for convenience.

Condoms? Yes please. A cute, incognito way to stash my condoms…but still have them within reach? Yes again.

Lets be honest, girls will find any excuse to buy cute accessories, whether it’s for their outfits, apartments, or their condoms. Though it could be used as a shopping excuse, the practicality of the array of new, fun condom holders on sale is reason enough to buy. Not many want to display their array of condom choices in public view, but stashing them at the bottom of your drawer, or losing them in that giant “purse” you carry around is just not convenient. Well ladies (and gents) those days of fumbling blindly in your drawer or purse are gone!

There are now a ton of options and ways to store your protection. The Frisky has a great article showcasing different options for condom holders. There are clean, sleek condom dispensers that hold a significant amount and are perfect for a guy’s nightstand, so they are always within reach. If you’re main concern isn’t just convenience but instead want something a little more disguised and stylish, there are several vase-like options. The newest trend seems to be sleek cases meant to hold one or two condoms and stored in your purse. Many look just like a stylish compact. I even discovered a cool website where you can design your own!


Basically, your options are endless when it comes to storing your condoms. Whether you’re looking for an industrial-sized dispenser or a sleek, fashionable holder for your purse, there’s a condom holder out there for you…so get shopping!

p.s. if you’re not in the market for a holder but still want some cute protection, check out the different lines of Proper Attire condoms.

"The Pregnancy Pact"

This past Saturday night started off with the intentions of having a simple, relaxing night spent watching a movie with some girlfriends. However, it soon turned into us engaging in somewhat heated discussions over the contents of the movie we were watching. What were we watching you ask? Surprisingly, it was a Lifetime movie that got us all riled up.

Lifetime’s newest “inspired by true events” creation, “The Pregnancy Pact”, premiered last Saturday night at 9:00 pm. The movie followed four teenage girls at a high school in Gloucester, Massachusetts who all become pregnant at the age of fifteen. When the number of pregnant girls at their high school spikes to an astonishing 18, media from all over the nation start to focus on this tiny town. Even more controversy starts to arise when rumors surface that the pregnant girls made a pact to all become pregnant at the same time. Throw in the mother of the main character (pregnant 15 year old Sara’s) who believes in “abstinence-only education”, and Lifetime has quite the drama.

Most of the movie was inspired, not based-on, the 2008 events that occurred in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Though the movie portrays four of the pregnant girls making a pact, none of the real life pregnant Gloucester girls ever admitted to such a pact.

As my friends and I watched the movie, we found ourselves using each commercial break to discuss how irritated we were with the movie. The first thing that immediately got our attention was the immaturity, and seemingly-naivety of the girls who were getting pregnant. Whether this came from the abstinence-only education that their school system firmly believed in, or the way the director wanted these characters to be portrayed, we felt they had no idea how their decision to get pregnant was going to affect them and everyone around them for the rest of their lives. Though this clueless-ness continued throughout most of the movie, the last ten minutes showed the girls coming to the realization of what they had done and the consequences. Everything from the thought of adoption, financial strains, to losing a high-school love was shown as a consequence, and rightfully so.

While we could not come to a conclusion on how we exactly felt about this movie, the fact remains that it gets people to think about the topic of teen pregnancy. Overall, this movie can be used as a great tool for mothers and daughters to open the lines of communication about pregnancy, sex and birth control. I’m confident that no mother that has seen this movie wants to be put in the situation of Sara’s, who firmly believed that her daughter Sara believed in abstinence and was not having sex, only to be completely misinformed when 15 year-old Sara announces she is pregnant. After seeing that miscommunication, I think every mother with a daughter would want to sit her daughter down and watch this with her.

While the actions and thoughts of the movies’ teen girls are more than often very questionable, by the end of the movie I believe a strong message was put forth that teen pregnancy is a serious issue facing the entire nation, and is not something that should be accepted or ignored. Communication, education, and prevention were all ways the movie highlighted on how to deal with this issue, and overall, I believe Lifetime did a good job bringing teen pregnancy to the forefront of many families’ minds.

Just How Much Should Love Hurt? Or, Don't Claim Your Orgasm, Ladies.

Just how much should love hurt? According to Christina Nehring, a lot. And you won't just hurt, you'll suffer. But oh will it be worth it.

In fact, you can expect to feel miserable, alone, on the edge of insanity... all for the plight of love and romance.

And sex? What sex? Nehring argues that the "availiablity" of sex in our age of internet technologies and mass mediated communications makes true love impossible; that romance depends on "other-ness, tension, and reserve." Well, I guess Nehring and I have different definitions of love and romance. It's difficult for me to imagine any deep feelings of companionship and compassion to come out of that blockade that she thinks must be built between partners.

Nehring uses the romance stories of centuries past as her models - Jane Austen, in particular. As a book nerd, I can even somewhat understand Nehring's sense of Romanticism and idealism towards love and romance, but I don't understand why this tortuous angst is required. Yes, love when it is towards an unwilling object, love when it is unreciprocated, is taxing on our emotions and bodies. But those are situations where the rational and self-respecting thing to do is walk away.

Out of all the things that Nehring says about the disintegration of love in our time, the most problematic to me are her sex-negative and even female body-negative opinions, paraphrased in an article by Laura Sessions Step for sexreally.com:

"It is not, for example, 'sex-on-tap,' or 'the relentless emphasis on sexual climax that…has a largely depleting effect on the life of the emotions.' 'When erotic intimacy is available at the tap of a mouse,' she writes, or, indeed, at the amiable request of one’s household partner (“what about a quickie before lunch, dear?”); when magazines nudge us to 'claim' orgasms as we do receipts at the end of our transactions at Starbucks; when Broadway hits like Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues have women hollering the names of their genitals and baking cakes in their shape, then sex has simply become too available.”

Wait... what? Since when does it make sense to link a woman's positive sense of self and body image with bad types of love? And, last time I checked, the Vagina Monologues have been nothing but positive for women all over the globe for over 10 years.

Sessions Stepp goes on, saying:

"Love is also not an equal partnership, in her view. It is the ardor of a college student for her professor, a young man for an older man."

This view on love is troubling. It means that we would be denied real human connection, openness, and comfort. It also would mean elevated levels of depression, partner abuse, and so on. I, for one, do not think that love means despair.

An interesting and maybe even enlightening or liberating exercise that I suggest all our readers do is to take a moment and think about what sex, love and romance mean to you. How do you define them? Do they involve two people? Can't they involve just you? Perhaps they involve more? I urge you to rethink those three vague ideas outside of their social constructions (p.s. this originally was an exercise in Dr. Sekile Nzinga Johnson's Psych of Women class in spring 2009, so I can't take all the credit for it!).