Sex ads to sell contraceptives

Press, 25 May 1977, Page 16

Sex ads to sell contraceptives

i Bv NZPA science editor, ' ' LLOYD TIMBERLAKE. i [ London •j If sex can be used in Brittain to sell cars, beer and 11 cigarettes, why can’t it be i[used to sell contraceptives? [j The question is asked by [ an angry young woman in a i new booklet, “Advertising ' and Contraceptives” in i which Miss Suzie Hayman i criticised the media for 1 apparent prudery in the face [ of changing opinions in the i rest of the world. 1 “In a society where seven [ out of 10 teen-age brides are i pregnant and where each > year 20,000 teen-agers have [ illegitimate babies and api proximately 250,000 children • are born unplanned and [ often unwanted, have we the i right to be embarrassed ■ about contraception?” she asks. Miss Hayman, information [officer at a leading family planning organisation, is attacking British attitudes which make it difficult to get even the most tasteful and low-key messages regarding contraception and family planning into newspapers and on to television and posters. The Independent Broadcasting Authority, with over all responsibility for the output of commercial radio and! television, classes con-I

traceptives with “smoking cures, products for the treatment of haemorrhoids, slimming clinics and clinics for the tratment of hair and scalp” and bans the lot, Miss Hayman notes. The medical periodical ‘‘General Practitioner” recently asked the 1.8. A. what polls they had taken to back up this opinion, and were told, “We have done no research on this topic. We don’t feel we need to.” Yet, writes Miss Hayman, a TV shampoo commercial shows women preening their hair getting ready to be ravished by Vikings, a cigar commercial has a buxom maiden squatting over a mountain stream fondling a cigar, and even the British Milk Marketing Board asks housewives: “is your man getting enough?” Miss Hayman sums up: “If we are to continue to accept that cigars, chocolates, shampoo and cars may be sold to us wrapped up with the tinsel of sex: If we are to continue to allow sex itself to be sold along with all these consumer products, then the consumer has the right to be protected against such blandishment by being adequately informed about and motivated to use birth control. ■