Thank you Shani Silver for bringing alerting me to the awesome movement known as Movember, which encourages men to grow moustaches throughout the month of November to raise awareness of prostate cancer and other male diseases. To learn more, visit Movember.com.
To visit Ben’s photo on Refinery29, click here!
I couldn’t resist putting all of A.J. (real name Kyciana) up today. I first photographed her a few months ago. There are always so many well-dressed young people running around in the Loop during fall because of all the college campuses. At first I didn’t recognize A.J. because she had changed her hair. All I saw was her incredibly cool outfit and killer Dr. Martens. When I ran up to her and started giving my spiel, she said “Amy, it’s me! A.J.!” That I hadn’t recognized her actually made her more excited to be spotted a second time, because it was based soley on the merits of her look. A.J. uses fashion in such interesting ways. In her own words, “it’s all about that swag.”
In 2009, exactly ten years after my “abstinence-only” sex ed class, I took a trip to Kenya with my mom at the age of 23 to go on a safari. In between flights we spent the night in Nairobi, where I would see up close the effect that the HIV/AIDS epidemic has on people when I visited the Kibera neighborhood in Kenya’s capitol city.
As part of the Explore Kibera program, we met with community leaders and social activists including a group of of HIV+ women who formed an informal trade network to sell handmade jewelry to pay for their treatment. Two of the women I met told me how they contracted HIV from their husbands who had been having unprotected sex behind their backs. Another told me about how she had contracted the virus during a rape.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking part of the tour was when we brought food and school supplies to a church-run HIV/AIDS orphanage. All of the kids there were HIV+ orphans who had contracted it from their parents. After that experience I pretty much just wanted to sit down and cry for the rest of my life. I felt hopeless in the face of so much suffering. But there are things we can do to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, like promoting the use of condoms.
The fact is that condoms, when used properly, dramatically reduce the risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS during sex. People who live in progressive Northern cities like Chicago are often unaware that there are still places in the United States – like Fayetteville, Arkansas – where teenagers are taught that the only way to protect oneself from contracting HIV is not to have sex at all. While it’s true that abstinence is the only way to 100% protect against HIV, condoms are extremely effective (99% with perfect use) because the fact is that the vast majority of human beings are having sex, married or not. And as I learned in Kibera even married monogamous women can contract HIV if their unfaithful partners don’t use condoms as protection.
Which brings me to Maggie Kervick’s work in raising awareness around the slut-shaming of women who carry condoms. She decided to combat the secrecy and awkwardness that often surrounds discussions about safe-sex by bringing it right out into the open. You guessed it – she designed handbags made out of condom packets. Definitely a conversation starter, these bags are meant to get people talking about these issues making them both a fashion statement and tool for social awareness.
Listen up sex-positive readers, to enter to win Maggie Kervick’s wristlet above all you have to do is:
1. Like LifeStyles Condoms on Facebook
2. Like Maggie’s Facebook Page, BagsByMags
3. And leave a comment on this post with your first name and last initial telling me one thing you love about yourself. That might sound strange, but practicing safe sex (whether with a condom, by being monogamous, or practicing abstinence) is all about self-love.
I’ll announce the winner in a separate post next Friday, December 9th. Then I’ll arrange via email to have the bag mailed to you. GOOD LUCK!
To learn more about how to safely use condoms, click here to visit the LifeStyles website.
