A couple of weeks ago, while enjoying an adult beverage at a local pub, I had a rare opportunity to feel pleased with a marketing campaign. And no, it wasn't the Lone Star beer campaign that employs a little tongue-in-cheek Texas chauvinism to hawk its wares. This one was for Trojan condoms. First, you see the posters in the bar's bathroom: A picture of a barful of pigs hitting on reluctant women, with one man talking to one very interested woman. It's a reference to the TV ad campaign that compares men who refuse to use condoms to barnyard animals. To reinforce the message -- "Evolve: Use a condom every time" -- the bottom of the pint glasses had little pictures of pig noses in them, with the Trojan branding and slogan on the reverse.

It's a brilliant strategy, and could only be better if they had condom machines in the bathrooms. This pub isn't cruise-y, but a lot of people go there on dates. So Trojan is still grabbing people with a safe sex message right before they get into a situation where unsafe sex often happens--after a date that involves drinking alcohol. The ads use humor to take the edge off, but also bluntly address one of the most significant unspoken barriers to getting people to use condoms every time: a lot of the time, women are afraid to request or men actively resist condom use. The uncomfortable fact is that men have more of the responsibility for use with condoms, but women run a greater risk in unprotected sex. (I'm sure it works the other way around, but I suspect the responsibility/risk ratio means that it's more common that men resist and women cave.)

All I could think while examining this marketing campaign was, "Why haven't we seen more of this? Campaigns like this should be in high school buses and coffee shops, too. Plus, this should have started long ago." But America is in short supply of the sort of common sense that says that condom ads should be located where people are in danger of having unsafe sex, and that said ads should bluntly address barriers to using condoms properly. When the first ads from this campaign came out, CBS and Fox balked at showing them.

You can't blame prudery. Fox aired this blunt advertisement for Victoria's Secret lingerie during the 2008 Superbowl. The meaning--this underwear is a preliminary for the Hawt Sex right after the game!--couldn't have been more explicit. I'm not a prudish person by any means, but watching model Adriana Lima flop around and spread her legs while wearing skimpy underwear in front of my friends, and suffering the knowledge that this was supposed to inspire middle-aged sports fans around the country to rip off their team jerseys and hump their wives atop king-sized beds, well, it all made me blush pretty hard. To Fox, that was acceptable, but a Trojan ad where everyone kept their clothes on and innuendo was employed more effectively was somehow off-limits.

Of course, Fox explained the decision in bluntly anti-woman tones, arguing the use of condoms to prevent pregnancy offended their network standards. Presumably, the Victoria's Secret ad is acceptable, as long as the viewer thinks she's posing half-naked as if to say, "Oh you hot football fan studs, impregnate me now."

I shouldn't be surprised. Obvious double standards like that fly under the radar of far too many people. I'm thinking specifically of the popular right wing blogger The Anchoress, who in a bizarre tirade that was presumably about how everyone should shut up about sex, made it clear she meant, "Everyone but me because it's different when it's me." But maybe she should have re-thought sharing information like this:

I like various positions! With the lights on and off! In the daytime and the nighttime! In the ocean and in the windowseat! I like sex on Sunday mornings! Can I get an "AMEN" for Cunnilingus? AMEN for cunnilingus! Can I get a "You know how to whistle, don't you" for Fellatio? "You know how to whistle, don't you?" Can I get a "Ride'em Cowboy" for my husband? Yippeekayae! Can I get an "arghghghghg" for Readi Whip and maraschino cherries? Arghghghghghg! What, no brownies?

Which just made everyone wonder if she's so right wing because she suffers from a staggering lack of imagination. Contrast her entitled attitudes about her own sex life with her brutal lack of generosity for others. If you can follow: if you're an American married right wing nut, then you get to have sex in various positions with extremely silly nicknames and you get to pat yourself on the back for it. But if you're from Myanmar and your community has been ravaged by a typhoon and your access to health care is limited, then you deserve to die of AIDS for "Ride ‘em Cowboy." Got it.

This double standard--where explicit sex is fine but explicit discussions of safety make people squirmy--must play a huge role in inconsistent condom use. The squeamishness around the Trojan ad is just one example. For once, we have an ad that has the potential to help educate people about negotiating for condom use as well as sell a product.

Another example that comes to mind for me is the role of lubrication in condom usage. A recent episode of "Sex Is Fun" alerted me to this problem. Many people, women especially, think they are allergic to latex who aren't because they had bad reactions to condoms, including pain or itching. In fact, many of them simply aren't using enough lubrication. So now you have a situation where women are shunning condoms because of these side effects, when a bit of accurate, straightforward, and, yes, explicit education would go a long way.