A new restaurant promoting safe sex and condom use has opened in the United Kingdom, but many people are still too embarrassed to even buy them – why?
As sex education goes, it's pretty unconventional. Cabbages and Condoms is a Thai restaurant chain that serves food along with contraception. The name says it all.
Condomsare handed out to customers instead of after-dinner mints and each restaurant is covered in them – literally. Lights and walls are adorned with condoms, artworks are even made out of them.
All profits go into sex education and AIDS prevention programmehailand, in the Oxfordshire town of Bicester.
Of all the towns in all the world, it's not an obvious choice.
But in the U.K. many people are still too embarrassed to buy condoms in public and can't even talk about sex "in a normal way," say sex education charities.
So why are so many of us still so uncomfortable when it comes to condoms?
This awkwardness is enshrined in British popular culture. Songs like"House of Fun" by Madnesssum up the awkwardness many feel when trying to buy condoms, with such lines as: "A toothbrush and hairspray, plastic grin./ Mrs. Clay on the corner has just walked in."
Britain is a sexualised society where adult shops like Ann Summers can be found on many High Streets and condoms and lubricants of any number of flavors, textures and smells can be bought at your local pharmacist.
New York Times News Service