Lately I've been seeing (on late night TV) commercials for Trojan condoms. These feature a couple trying to kiss and hold hands through a chain link fence while the announcer intones that condoms help protect you from sexually transmitted diseases that may destroy your fertility and keep you from having children later on. Now I don't know what the marketing department was smoking on the day it developed this ad, but it seems to display a Catholic understanding of artificial birth control and its limitations.
Here's this young guy and girl. They want to be close to one another, but there's this damn chain link fence in the way. Trying to kiss through a fence looks pretty silly, and I'm guessing (not having done this sort of thing myself) that's it's rather unsatisfying. There's a barrier between them blocking the completeness of their embrace. Perhaps the symbolism the producers were looking to evoke was an image of playing it safe, but frankly, a fence is a fence is a fence. Something is standing between the guy and the girl, and any expressions of love are going to be truncated until they can find the gate, or until the guy decides that the girl is worth the effort of climbing the fence.
The Theology of the Body talks about the intrinsic meaning of sex. On a spiritual level it's an image of the love Christ has for the Church; even at a purely physical level it says, "I love you and I give myself to you completely, without reservation." Using birth control to withhold one's fertility makes a lie of the objective meaning of sex. Regardless of the intention in using a condom or the pill or the patch (to space children, financial reasons, a one-night stand), birth control is the fence between the couple.
Funny that a Trojan condom commercial should recognize that.
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6 comments:
You make me think of the ads for the contraceptive patch that we've seen. When they first began it showed a girl on a date with a guy, then them kissing at the door and kind of left you guessing as to whether he went in or went home...
Guess that was too direct because those only ran a short time and they were replaced with girls dancing and chasing butterflies ... because we don't want to SHOW a one night stand.
The contraceptive patch is a funny thing, its no coincidence that those who wear them also wear revealing enough clothing that we all know they are wearing them.
Something like this should be viewed as a sort of "scarlette letter," when people halt any pretense of doing right they aren't even immoral, they are ammoral, and it is just sad.
Boy, the things you miss out on going to a religious college... I've never seen someone visibly wearing a contraceptive patch.
I can't imagine they were around in your day Darwin?
They are usually worn by the shoulderblade or just at the waist front or back, places no self respecting lady would exhbit to the world.
Hmmmm. Shoulderblades and waists of self-respecting ladies. Sounds like a job for... Rick Lugari!
LOL...
I was going to say ladies don't need to be self-respecting. We have all the respect for them they need. ;)
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