Condoms in Popular Culture : “90210″

While Condom Man’s life is busy and rather hectic, even he finds time to occasionally sit down, relax and watch TV once in a while. Yesterday was once of those times, and it just so happens that it was a convenient time to be watching TV, as I witnessed an interesting back-and-forth about safe sex shown on one of America’s newest mainstream shows, 90210.

Before I start, I have to make the disclaimer that I was FORCED to watch the show and I did not do so by my own choice (that’s the joy of sharing a remote with your wife.) The new “90210″ was announced a few months ago to much fanfare and publicity. It’s quickly become one of the crown jewels of the CW network. I know the show was drafted up in a matter of months in order to make it into the fall schedule, but the number of cliches and the amount of bad writing in the show is phenomenal. In the episode I watched, about a high school girl deciding whether or not to have sex for the first time, a condom takes center stage as a plot device to advance the dialogue.

The show uses a thousand different tired cliches about sex, safe sex, talking about safe sex and condom use. For all of of the show’s contemporary references - for example, one girl talks about her blog in the opening of the episode - it’s amazing that the writers fell back on such tired cliches about condom use. The first and most obvious example is the decades old joke about the high schooler carrying the same condom in his wallet for four years. When talking with her brother about having sex, she tells him she needs to borrow his wallet so that she can use the condom : “you know, the one you’ve had stored in there for four years.” Well, I’m sure you all know that this sort of dialogue drives me crazy. Firstly, because it’s an old joke which has been done a thousand times; secondly, because you should never keep a condom in your wallet for any serious length of time. (For reference, please check out my other article about keeping a condom in your wallet.)

The sister seems to be fine talking with her brother about safe sex and condom use, even feeling comfortable enough about it to ask him to borrow a condom. But when it comes time to talk with her parents about sex and safe sex, the topic barely comes up, and when it does, the character all of a sudden and for no reason becomes completely quiet, shy and non-communicative. The parents, in response to this, are equally quiet. The mother tells the father to “trust her daughter,” also saying that he should stay out of the affairs - “some things are best left to mother and daughter.” The portrayal of a teen as shy when the topic of safe sex comes up with their parents is a pretty accurate one. But I think the show’s portrayal of the parents as equally clueless is a little dangerous. The show seems to suggest that parents, in order to be cool, shouldn’t talk to their teenagers about safe sex and the dangers of having sex. They should just “trust” that the kids are smart enough to figure this stuff out on their own. Now, I’m not expecting 90210 to become an after-school special where the parents sit down and have a half-hour conversation on safe sex, but still, the portrayal of parents as being out of touch and not communicating with their kids at all is an unhealthy one. Parents should be involved in their kids’ lives, and should educate them on every aspect of growing up, especially about things that can have potentially large consequences.