Kiss Me, You Fool

Let’s state the obvi­ous: sex sells. If you want proof that we live in a sex-saturated cul­ture, I urge you to watch music videos for ten min­utes and count the num­ber of oiled-up, gyrat­ing bod­ies. Or observe the pop­u­lar (and admit­tedly hilar­i­ous) Old Spice ads fea­tur­ing Isa­iah Musafa, who immod­estly advises while wrapped in a towel that women love a man who smells like Old Spice. Sex in adver­tis­ing is absurd — no mat­ter how good you smell, men, I can still tell the dif­fer­ence between a beer belly and a six-pack — but it’s omnipresent. Strange, then, that sex has been miss­ing from sell­ing, well, sex.

Sex­ual health, to be more spe­cific. Think back to high school sex ed, which may be the last place any­one ever sat you down and talked to you about sex. Or maybe your par­ents gave you “the talk.” What I remem­ber was a lengthy ser­mon about the var­i­ous infec­tions that might make you itchy and a recita­tion of sta­tis­tics about unwanted teen preg­nancy. It goes a lot smoother with school boards and par­ents if young peo­ple are taught about all the scary con­se­quences of hav­ing sex, in (usu­ally inef­fec­tive) attempts to dis­suade them from fol­low­ing their hor­mones, rather than get­ting an edu­ca­tion that talks about plea­sure and enjoy­ment. We all know sex is awe­some– we learned that from TV– but sex­ual health is mar­keted about as erot­i­cally as decon­ges­tants or lax­a­tives. And yet your sex­ual health is essen­tial to a pos­i­tive sex­ual expe­ri­ence. The only care­free sex is safe sex, after all– you can’t be worry-free if you don’t know your body and trust your part­ner. And with that in mind, Options for Sex­ual Health decided that this is the sum­mer to remind peo­ple all over BC that sex­ual health is sexy. At least as sexy as an Old Spice com­mer­cial (well, fin­gers crossed).

A new adver­tis­ing cam­paign, which shows two young peo­ple mak­ing out in a clinic wait­ing room, is now on buses all over the province, and with it is the Sexy Sum­mer Kiss­ing Con­test. The rules are sim­ple: take a make­out photo with a part­ner. Bonus points for incor­po­rat­ing the theme of sex­ual health– that’s your cue to bring in some props. Send it in to contest@optbc.org. We’ll post it up on our Flickr page and give away prize packs that will make your sum­mer safe and sexy, includ­ing a grand prize of a year’s sup­ply of con­doms (use them all your­self or share them gen­er­ously like a Sexy Santa Claus). It’s easy, it’s fun, and it gives you an excuse for a mid­day sum­mer make­out ses­sion– what’s not to love? It’s time that every­one remem­bered that tak­ing care of their sex­ual health doesn’t have to be a drag– it’s some­thing that can be done with a part­ner, that can be spiced up or exper­i­mented with, that can be fun, and, well, sexy.

For more details, visit Opt’s web­site at http://optionsforsexualhealth.org. If you have a burn­ing ques­tion about sex­ual health or any­thing sex-related at all, call our 1–800-SEX-SENSE line and talk to a real, live expert in all things sexual.

Michelle Reid is a con­trib­u­tor to Sad Mag and loves it with all her heart. In her pro­fes­sional life, she likes to talk about sexy times over at Options for Sex­ual Health, and yes, if you’re at a party and you need a con­dom, she’s a good per­son to ask.