A Bitter Pill - or - Johnny Be Good

I’m not proud to admit it, but I’m a real hypochondriac. I blame the internet; my dad’s sister is notoriously health, or rather, sickness-conscious, as is my dad, so medical dictionaries have long been banned from our mutual family homes. The discovery of NHS Direct, or DeathWeb as it could be more appropriately named, then, meant that my every ache, twinge, grizzle or graze could be immediately and falsely identified as either Cancer or AIDS.

Imagine then the fun that ensued when I discovered sex. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a massive fan of safe sex – sex is, after all a messy, squidgy experience at the best of times (while, of course, being an enormous amount of fun) – but while use of a condom may have kept knob-rot at bay, a flimsy piece of latex was insufficient protection for my hormone-addled, paranoid teenage mind. I was 17, and to this day I am convinced I was too much too young, with too much information and not enough knowledge.

That bout of uninvited sharing out of the way then, I read with some interest this week the growing debate surrounding new plans to allow the advertising of abortion – or pregnancy advisory – services on television and radio, as part of plans aimed at reducing the UK’s high rate of teenage pregnancies and sexual infections. This news came, rather unfortunately, alongside a trial scheme at four Oxfordshire secondary schools allowing girls as young as 11 to ask their school nurse for the morning after pill via text message.

It’s easy to jump on the middle-England, chav-baiting bandwagon and say that most teenage pregnancies are simply the by-product of a generation who see babies as the ultimate meal ticket and should be opposed as such. But, snobbery aside, care must be taken to ensure that in advertising these services, and in making the morning after pill readily available, the safe sex message is still pushed, and pushed more often and with more force. After all, pregnancy is not the only unwanted side-effect of unprotected sex.

Genuine crusties will remember the, frankly terrifying, warning adverts when HIV/AIDS became more widespread in the 1980s. If the sight of that terrifying, tombstone-like black slab wasn’t enough to persuade you to practice safe sex, it was certainly scary enough to dilute your mojo. Nowadays, sexual health ads tend to be a little edgier, a little cooler; more appropriate for the Skins generation.

So one can only assume, if The London Paper’s rather frightening article suggesting that two-thirds of young Londoners practice unsafe sex, believing that they had literally ‘no chance’ of contracting HIV is to be accepted, that young people are simply not scared for their sexual health.

This could be explained by the fact that ‘responsible adults’ are targeting their fears in the wrong direction. It’s impossible to ignore the fact that there can be emotional implications for sexual precociousness; if at 17 I felt I was unprepared for sex, it boggles my mind to imagine that 11-year-olds could be better equipped to deal with it. But rather than impotently wringing our hands at the idea that younger teenagers are finding out that down there’s for more than weeing, perhaps it would be useful reminding them that if they’re going to hop on the bad foot and do the good thang, there can be, and usually are, consequences to this.

Adverts for condoms and contraceptives are, if anything, too few and far between as it is. Currently only Channel 4, that bastion of taboo and general naughtiness, are allowed to broadcast adverts for condoms before the 9pm watershed. Were that not bad enough, those that are shown are entirely too mild. Apparently scaring the bejeebers out of us stopped being vogue, so maybe it's time to get gory. Be graphic! Talk about vaginal discharge, or warty bell-ends! If you can’t put the frighteners on young shaggers, then at least try to put them off their dinner!

Because saying something terrible could happen, and seeing that something terrible in action are two entirely different things: I’d suggest taking a similar approach to the warnings on tobacco packaging; emblazoning bottles of Blue WKD with photographs of seeping, cheesy, gonorrhoea-infected naughty bits and the slogan – ‘Wrap it up, dirty dick’. If that doesn’t encourage you to use a condom (or switch to beer) then I don’t know what will.

And treat adverts for emergency contraception in entirely the same way – a 10-minute clip of a newborn baby screaming its lungs out at full volume, pausing every few moments to show close-up HD-ready images of greenish baby shit and milky sick-up. The problem isn’t that young people aren’t aware of what could happen if they don’t practice safe sex, it’s that the consequences simply aren’t frightening enough.

In the Daily Mail’s report Dr Peter Saunders, of the Christian Medical Fellowship said: 'Allowing the advertising of abortion services is not dealing with the real problem. This is the approach of having the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff to deal with the casualties.’ That’s as maybe, though his argument seems a little weighted; I, for instance, know that you can get artificial limbs, but that doesn’t mean I’d do the conga through a minefield.

Making the morning after pill readily available, and making young people aware of pregnancy advisory services can, and should be seen as positive steps. It’s too easy to say that the need to promote these things is indicative of ‘Broken Britain’; accidents happen, and people make mistakes. But Mary Kenny’s argument in the Guardian holds weight – contraception should, and must be the norm. Because yes, accidents do happen and yes, people do make mistakes, but in the case of sexual health, and unwanted pregnancy, these are mistakes that are, more often than not, avoidable.

The real concern here is that young people are not left with, much like me, too much information and not enough knowledge. Our high teenage pregnancy and STI figures show that young Brits know what to do with what they have in their pants. The real trick is to make sure they do it responsibly, because if we fail to do that, we’re all going to be screwed…

Mayo-Nay-Sayers

(Note: I wrote this the other week, and then forgot to actually post it – hence the slightly dated Doctor Who reference. But I didn’t have the heart to leave it unposted. So here it is...)

First things first, did anyone see last Saturday’s Doctor Who?

Bloody brilliant, wasn’t it? Slightly mind-bending, in a Sliding Doors meets The Butterfly Effect kind of way, but absolutely awesome nonetheless. The concept that an entire, post-apocalyptic universe could be created on the back of a single decision to turn either right, or left, is something that has the ability to challenge the way we view our own decisions, and the implications and impact of the things we do is brought shuddering to the forefront of our minds.

Now consider this; Doctor Who is aimed at a family audience, deemed suitable for viewing by children, despite the often weighty themes of loss, death, revenge and retribution. I like to think that the reason these themes are allowed to exist so heavily in a programme aimed primarily at geeks (like me) and ten-year-olds, is that the average ten-year-old is not actually that thick, and is sufficiently equipped to deal with such concepts and emotions. It is because of this that I am filled with such apoplectic rage at Heinz’s decision to pull the ads for their new Deli Mayonnaise.

The ad, pulled as a result of over 200 complaints to Heinz, depicts a ‘typical’ domestic morning; kids and husband getting ready for school and work, while ‘mum’, played here by a De Niro-lookalike in chef’s whites and a, frankly shocking, white paper hat, prepares the packed lunches using Heinz’s new ‘delicious’ mayonnaise. The ad concludes with ‘dad’ planting a split-second peck on the bestubbled lips of poor, downtrodden ‘mum’ before leaving for work. Steamy stuff! Pass the bloody smelling salts.

Complaints have ranged from deeming the advert ‘offensive’, to the even more bemusing ‘unsuitable to be seen by children’, claiming that it raises the difficult problem for parents having to resultantly explain the issue of same-sex relationships to children. Aside from being ludicrous and knee-jerk-reactionary, these complaints are displaying a startling lack of understanding of the story the advert is trying to tell.

Forgive me if I’ve completely misinterpreted the ad, but the New York Deli Man in question is not actually supposed to be a man at all – the children call ‘him’ mum, and the husband reacts to ‘him’ as though ‘he’ (I’ll stop with the inverted commas, now – it’s doing my head in) were his wife, not his civil partner. So why on Earth does the question of same-sex relationships even need apply. If the basic premise of the advert is that the mayonnaise is so good that it has transformed mum from a bog standard cheese-and-pickle-peddler to a sandwich savant, then it would be safe to assume that the two little darlings are not actually coming home to daddy and daddy. As a result, the ad can be explained as simply as; ‘that’s not really a man, little Timmy, the advert is making a joke about the mayonnaise tasting the same as mayonnaise in New York, so they have changed the mummy into a New York sandwich man.’ It’s not rocket science, and it’s about as offensive as Les Dawson, dressed as a woman, hoisting his enormous padded boobies over a fence.

Moreover, if anything, surely feminists and women should be getting their knickers in a twist over the ad; poor old mum enslaved in sandwich hell, while her precocious little shits demand extra ham and two different types of mayonnaise, and her hubby neglects even to give her a cursory peck on the way out of the house. It could just as easily be an advert for Prozac.

The ludicrous irony of the entire storm-in-a-teacup is that the advert was already deemed ex-kid, as it promotes a product that is high in salt and sugar. Though I personally can’t remember ever nagging my mum to pick up some caramelised onion flavoured mayo on the weekly shop around Tesco’s, at least it’s slightly more valid to protect children from the evils of fatty mayonnaise than it is to protect them from the evils of a 70’s throwback comedy sketch.

The ad’s a bloody double-edged sword; don’t let kids see the fatty mayonnaise! Don’t let kids see the innocuous same-sex kiss! Don’t let kids hear the word ‘sweetcheeks’ before the watershed! Don’t let kids stay up after the watershed! Good grief. It’s over-sensitive hand-wringing at its absolute worst. But what’s worst of all, is that it treats children like idiots; as if they are totally unable to work out that most basic of concepts, that one person is pretending to be someone else. It’s not rocket science, and it certainly isn’t ‘the difficult issue of same-sex relationships’ sneaking through the back door (ooh err missus, etc...). It’s a mum, masquerading as a New York deli man, transformed by the e-numbery goodness of Heinz’s Deli Mayonnaise.

If we can trust kids with the notions of tri-sexual immortal Captain Jack Harkness, universe-hopping Rose Tyler and the double-hearted Doctor, then why can’t we trust them with a little same-sex peck on the back of a dated joke? In an increasingly over-sensitive and easy-to-offend society, the last thing we need to be doing is tearing apart innocent adverts, finding sex where it isn’t and preaching puritan values where they are neither valuable nor necessary. Adverts are adverts, they’re not real life, they’re not the News at Ten. They’re simply tiny little mindfucks designed to convince you to buy something. And if you’re going to allow yourself to take them too seriously, well, I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t cut the mustard* with me.

*apologies – I was desperate to make at least one condiment pun… so there it is.