Pigs and Condoms

I ran across an ad in a particularly well-selling women's magazine today. It pictured a crowded restaurant in which every table was occupied by a beautiful woman and a pig.

Now, when I say pig, what I mean is...pig. This isn't an analogy. These perfect-10 ladies appeared to be enjoying cocktails with curly-tailed, dirt-rolling, H1N1-carrying piggies.

Needless to say, the image got my attention. Bravo, Madison Ave. I took a closer look.

Standing in the midst of this sea of odd couplings, a particularly lovely young woman was talking to the only human male in the room. The two appeared to be getting along, their smiles and body positioning indicating high interest levels.

Across the bottom of the page the tag-line read: Choose the one who uses a condom every time.

"Oh IIIIIIII get it...," I thought to myself.

The pigs represented the scores of men who send the fox into numerous hen houses without a helmet --those filthy animals. The only real man in the room, bless his heart, was the rose among thorns...that one-in-a-million guy who wraps it up each and every time he lets his horse out of the barn. Ah, the difference a little latex makes.

I felt mostly impressed with the ad's creativity, but an unidentifiable sense of annoyance was also looming over my head. I couldn't pin down what exactly was triggering it, so with a little sigh of appreciation for a product well-sold, I flipped the page. It wasn't until I was halfway through an article on the dietary benefits of roughage that I realized what about the clever little ad had bothered me.

"Wait a minute," I thought, flipping back to the page and getting a closer look at the stud in the pumas, "all a man has to do to be a prince among pigs is to roll on a condom before he plows every field in town?"

Hogwash!

How about he keep his tiller in the tool shed to begin with? It's not like the world's a big orgy and random sex is compulsory!

When did it become so mainstream to treat sharing bodily fluids like sharing a bowl of ice cream: just use a different spoon to avoid germs? Call me old-fashioned...call me delusional, even...but I think sex is the kind of transaction you reserve for special relationships, the kind that take more than a crowded bar and a few shots of tequila to cultivate. Yes, condoms protect against STD's, but that's not the only gross thing about doing a stranger. To me, the most unappealing thing about random sex is that it's random sex, a characteristic against which latex wields no power.

I'm not suggesting we all choose celibacy, but don't expect me to swoon for a man-whore just because he's health-conscious. I'm looking for an actual gentleman, a guy who (dare I say it...dare I even dream it) doesn't sleep around. I don't think that's too much to ask.

Until I find this dreamboat, I'll surely avoid being set up by any condom company execs. Clearly, our ideas of a "real man" are very different.