Toronto - Condoms are very much in style as a fashion
accessory at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, showing up on
strait-laced men, shy teenagers and African grandmothers.
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, a transvestite from
India, looks at a dress made of condoms by Brazilian artist Adriana
Bertini at the International AIDS conference in Toronto August 17, 2006.
[Reuters] |
"There's a great need to de-stigmatize condoms around the world, especially
in Africa," said Franck DeRose, executive director of The Condom Project, which
aims to get people comfortable about condoms, especially those living in
countries where the little piece of latex is considered taboo.
To do that, the project has a program that gets people making their own
condom art pin. It all starts with a craft table, packaged condoms, scraps of
colored paper, candy and other double-sided tape.
Toronto resident Maria Parish, 58, was making hers with a blue condom and
blue and yellow paper. "I want something to symbolize the flag of Ukraine," she
said. "I am of Ukrainian descent and AIDS is a global problem."
DeRose said that creating wearable art out of condoms attracts people who
normally wouldn't wear the prophylactics, let alone touch them or even utter the
word.
"It opens the door," said DeRose. "We find that we're very, very successful."
Almost 400,000 condoms have been decorated and turned into brooches or pins
around the world including India, Thailand, Senegal and Burkina Faso, he said.
Just this week alone, about 30,000 of the pins have been decorated at the
conference, DeRose said.
People from different cultures and backgrounds wear them, trade them and even
argue over safe-sex related topics while making them, including when to broach
the subject with kids, DeRose said.
"We're not pushing it on people. They come to us and the information is
there," said DeRose, adding his group teams up with the local information groups
in the communities where his team visits.
"I don't think it's healthy or appropriate to change a culture. But we can
change the risky behavior within a community."
DeRose, an artist from Washington, D.C., came up with the idea three years
ago while talking about ways to get more people to wear condoms to fight the HIV
epidemic. The program has since spread around the world.
"I have grandparents making them in Togo and Ethiopia. I have groups of
heterosexual men making them in Washington," said DeRose, 42.
He said he was also motivated by concern for his daughter, now 12, and
15-year-old son.
Adriana Bertini of Sao Paulo, Brazil, also was making a condom fashion
statement. She had plastic mannequins sporting a dress made of orange condoms, a
rose-colored mini, a blue harem outfit made of blue condoms, complete with a
tight bodice and full-legged trousers.
"The idea is you will see it and think of AIDS," said Bertini, who says she
has been making her condom fashions for 10 years.
