Making safer sex sexy may encourage condom use

 

Health researchers are often struggling to determine the best ways to promote safer sex both in the U.S. and abroad. Using condoms properly and consistently is the only effective way to prevent contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD), other than practicing abstinence. While in the U.S. it is not uncommon to see a clever ad campaign that uses sexy images to draw people in and remind them of the dangers of  STDs, these commercials are not usually seen in developing countries.

However, according to a recent article published in Scientific American, The Pleasure Project is starting a new campaign to "put the sexy back in safer sex" and plans to promote it across the globe. Recently, at the XIX International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C., the group held a session called Pleasure at AIDS 2012: Everything You Wanted to Know About Pleasurable Safer Sex but Were Afraid to Ask, where they set out to determine if sexy ads effectively promoted safer sex. They discovered that they answer is yes, but few HIV prevention campaigns take an erotic approach.

After examining 19 studies and 36 interventions that used eroticism to promote condom use, researchers from Brown University and the Miriam Hospital in Rhode Island concluded that these campaigns effectively encourage safer sex. However, few ads were using this method.

"It was really appalling that, after looking at 20,000 studies, we could only find 19 that explicitly employed eroticism," said researcher Lori Scott-Sheldon, Ph.D., quoted by Scientific American.

Yahoo! offers some tips on how people can make condom use seem sexier when they are getting busy. The news source recommended incorporating condoms into foreplay by seductively putting them on. Also, try different varieties to spice things up such as thin, ribbed, studded, pleasure-delaying, flavored, scented and many more.