Dear Emma

Dear Emma,

Thank you for your input. I truly appreciated the statistics you have provided.

But, as I stated on my post, it was not the Frenzy commercial itself that I was having an issue with. In fact, that was not my first post about Frenzy. When I first saw their commercial, I applauded Frenzy for it. I thought it was rather brave of them to take on such a sensitive topic. I liked their first commercial including its technical aspects.

My concern with the latest Frenzy commercial lies in its tagline, “The fun begins in the choosing.” I found it reckless and irresponsible.

By all means, we should promote the use of condoms in the light of disturbing statistics regarding sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies. I am all for the education of our teenagers where sex is concerned. I am, after all, the mother who taught her 25-year-old daughter to buy condoms at 7-11. (Long story, people. It was a lesson on empowerment.)

But, while we educate our children on practicing safe sex, I believe it is more important to educate them first on the responsibilities that go with sex. The Frenzy tagline in no way conveys the importance of sexual responsibility and maturity when it touts that the fun of sex begins with choosing the right condom.

Of course, sex is fun. Unless you're frigid or experiencing erectile dysfunction. In which case, it isn't fun. Of course, they have to buy condoms in an age where people must be doused with muriatic acid first before you sleep with them.

But there is more to sex than just having fun and choosing the right condom. I would imagine that we, as adults, realize that and it is something that we would like for our own children to understand first.

Before these teenagers even begin thinking of buying a condom, isn’t it better that they start thinking first if they should be having sex this early? If they are indeed ready to have sex? If they can answer those questions with a glorious yes, by all means, let the fun begin by choosing the right condom. Should that be the case, I would be more than happy to provide my child with her own condom allowance. That would save both of us from so much future heartaches and bankruptcies.

Admittedly, it is good that Frenzy is empowering and educating teenagers / young adults to make sure they practice safe sex. But I would feel a whole lot better if, somewhere within that tagline, someone told these kids to think first before buying a condom and having sex just because sex is fun.

The Frenzy tagline tells teenagers and young adults that it’s ok to have sex as long as you buy a condom. Whether you are 14 or 40, if you are not ready to have sex, don’t even go there.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not just teenagers and young adults who have to deal with peer pressure when it comes to sex. Adults deal with it as well.

Imagine being in your late 30s without a sex life and, yet, happy with your life. You have friends who hound you because you’re not getting laid. You begin to wonder what the hell is wrong with you because your lack of a sex life is constantly the butt of jokes. People snicker behind your back and say you’re cranky because you’re not getting any. If you didn’t know yourself any better, you’d give in to the pressure, buy the services of a stud muffin and just get laid to get everyone else off your back.

Which is probably how most adults end up in 7-11 buying condoms.

Sexual responsibility is more than just about buying condoms and practicing safe sex. It is about being mature enough to understand the ramifications of indulging in sex when one is not clearly ready for it yet.
Should the day come that my own child would want to do it, I would like for her to understand that sex is not simply a biological urge designed to kill an itch. That something changes in her the moment she decides to share her body with another human being. That sex does not begin and end with buying a condom. That practicing safe sex is just a small portion of what it really means to be sexually responsible.

That sex is not even about waiting until one is married or being religious about it. I don’t care if the Pope himself married my child and her husband at the Vatican. If she’s not ready to share her body with her husband, she should not be thinking at all about having sex, buying a condom or getting married.

Encouraging our kids to buy condoms without fully understanding what sexual responsibility is really all about is almost like teaching them how to use a gun but without warning them it’s a weapon that can kill people.
That, for me, is how the Frenzy tagline failed in delivering its message.

And, no, I refuse to assume that these kids would know a gun can kill. Or that sex entails responsibility. It is precisely because we assumed our kids know that got our children in trouble in the first place. They don’t know. They merely pretend to know and we as parents like to go along with that pretense rather than deal with the discomfort of discussing sex with our kids. If teenagers knew that or their parents made sure they knew that, I don’t think we’d have high statistics on unplanned teenage pregnancies.

Barring marketing objectives, I admire Frenzy for having the guts to deal with this subject on live national television. However, a little refinement of their tagline to include sexual responsibility would be infinitely better.

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Comment by Michael Santos on February 27, 2008 at 7:41am: Rebel without a clue
Selling sex

By Patricia Evangelista
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:50:00 02/02/2008

MANILA, Philippines--CONDOM ADS, ARGUES JO IMBONG OF FAMILY MEDIA Advocacy Foundation (FMAF), “convey a vulgar message and mock the sensibilities of the audience.”

I’d like to ask what she means by “a vulgar message.” If she is against the manner by which these advertisements are made, then her argument is not against condom advertisements in general, but against particular ads that “mock” her sensibilities. And yet FMAF and other conservative groups are calling for a blanket ban on all condom commercials, irrelevant of content. There is only one common denominator in all condom commercials, whether they involve King Kong, lingerie, or a doctor giving an opinion—it is that sexual activity must be accompanied by condom use. It is not the advertisements per se that Ms Imbong finds vulgar, it is the message that artificial contraception itself is acceptable.

Pro-Life Philippines’ Edgardo Sorreta says that these commercials “violate the innocence of the young, as their impressionistic minds are subconsciously formed on wrong values on sex.” Again, who determines what “the right values” are on sex? Sorreta and his group assume that they have a monopoly on morality, and that their perceptions and judgments are the perceptions and judgments of the millions who watch television. It follows, by their own limited perspectives, that because they perceive artificial contraception to be evil, others must be denied the right to this choice.

This is not only a debate on advertising; it is a debate on free choice. The right of the conservatives to choice is protected by the state, but so is the choice of the others to use artificial contraception. Unless they are able to prove, beyond personal and religious conviction, that artificial contraception is a danger to the individual, the state cannot and must not be compelled to deny its other citizens of the right to choose. I wonder how this group would feel if government mandated denying the public of information on natural family planning, and refused its teaching in public schools.

But let us give its members the benefit of the doubt. Let us assume that all they are against are condom commercials. Essentially, the anti-condom advertising lobby argues that advertisements encourage people to have sex. Marikina Rep. Marcelino Teodoro says that condom commercials “would only heighten the practice of pre-marital sex among the youth.”

The argument that condom commercials lead to sexual activity presupposes several things. It assumes that young people live in a vacuum devoid of the influences of school, the pressures of home, hormones and the daily onslaught of popular culture. There are no studies to prove this, but statistics do show this—that as of 2002, 23 percent of young Filipinos, ages 15-24 (about 4 million) have had premarital sex. Eighty percent of these sexually active youth said they did not use any form of protection, and 75 percent of their most recent sexual experiences were unprotected. I cannot believe that this predisposition for sexual activity is due to the sight of a young couple choosing condom flavors at a drugstore (in the case of Frenzy condoms) or due to Winnie Cordero interviewing a doctor about Trust condoms. The argument presumes that no other factors exist, and that young people live in a glass bubble. If condom commercials have such a profound effect in this manner, it follows to reason that the sight of these condoms on supermarket counters is enough to make innocents indulge in a frenzy of sexual activity. A condom commercial, in the face of current realities, is a warning, the offer of a choice to many who are unaware and uneducated. The fact that they are shown on prime time is only correct, because the more young people see these commercials, the more they will be aware that they too can be protected.

Perhaps before arguing that contraception advertisements are an insult to public morals, it is best to define what these morals are. After all, we live in a country whose tourists flock to ABS-CBN Studio 3, where the Wowowee girls, wrapped in scraps of neon jersey, thrust hip and cleavage at bedazzled audiences. Cosmopolitan’s cover announces it has “News that will change your sex life,” while a ripe Andrea del Rosario arcs her naked back on the cover of Maxim. On television, red-bikinied amazons charge at a man spraying Axe deodorant, while in another commercial, three beautifully muscled young men, for some inexplicable reason, prance through a rainforest dressed in their Bench underwear. And yet conservatives talk on as if condom advertisements are out of the ordinary in the context of modern Filipino culture.

Their logic assumes that the citizen is unable to make decisions, as if Robin Padilla wielding a gun and shooting indiscriminately in a telenovela will induce every man to go racing for an AK-47. If they persist in believing they define Filipino culture, and assume that the individual cannot make independent judgments, I suggest they ban every TV show from “Friends” to “Desperate Housewives,” every youth-oriented commercial, every other soap opera, romance novel and romantic comedy, burn literary classics and half the paintings in the national museum. After all, all these may lead to promiscuity.

Former CBCP president Oscar Cruz is right in that there is a danger of condom commercials misleading the public into believing that they prevent AIDS a hundred percent. There is nothing to stop the AdBoard from slapping a surgeon-general’s warning at the end of every ad that condoms only work 98 percent of the time. That fact, however, does not deny the utility of condoms in responsible sexual activity—according to the United Nations Joint Program on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organization, condoms are “the best defense” in preventing sexually transmitted diseases—if people insist on having sex, a 2-percent danger is better than a hundred percent. And yet he thunders with his most imposing point: “If that ‘thing’ can prevent the spread of AIDS and other diseases, how come AIDS cases are increasing?” The answer, I hazard, is because “that thing” is not being used—what with the removal of subsidies, a lack of access to contraceptives, and a strong conservative lobby against sex education.

Conservative groups are asking the courts to ban condom advertising—essentially depriving many citizens of their only source of information on condom use, and the right to make responsible choices. That, for me, mocks the public’s sensibilities.

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