Miss Universe Contestants Compete in the Condom Olympics

A fitting coda (or is it?) to the Summer of the Condom: this past weekend in the Bahamas, Population Services International, a global health organization, teamed up with the Miss Universe people to host the Condom Olympics.  A number of Miss Universe entrants, including Miss Universe 2008 Dayana Mendoza (pics after the jump), competed in the games; it was a day of sportmanship, fun, and scary AIDS rhetoric for all!

Events included the Balloon Inflation Race But With Condoms, the Water Balloon Toss But With Condoms, and something called “Wild Fire Infection.”  Details, plus if you ever wanted to see a video of Miss Australia blowing up a giant condom… you know where to click.  

So the main point of this condom affair was the HIV prevention and awareness, because HIV is definitely something we as a global village want to prevent and be aware of.  No HIV in our village, please!  The condom, in the village mythology, is a symbol of not getting AIDS.  So we honor that with an Olympics, just like they did with the old-times gods in Greece.

But what you’re wondering, I think, is how does one play “Wild Fire Infection”?

The games the contestants played today, along with the Condom Olympics, included one in which peer educators gave each girl a piece of paper and asked them to solicit signatures from the other contestants. Though they didn’t realize it, each signature represented an act of sex. Some girls agreed to only share their card with one other person, while others chose not to share their cards at all. After the activity, the girls were told that some of them had been “HIV positive” at the start of the game. Then they tracked, through their signatures, how far the infection had spread.

Well-intentioned, no doubt, except that with the actual spread of sexually transmissible diseases, a) you typically know when you’re having sex before or at very least during the fact (it’s not like, by the way: that thing you just did with a bunch of people?  That was sex.) and b) you have some idea of that there are infected people out there, also before the fact.  Also, c) does this game really merit a place in the Condom Olympics?  There are no condoms involved.  Maybe bump it over to the Unprotected Sex Olympics.  Even then, though, one runs into the problem of scoring it, as there are really only two results: gold medal if you didn’t get AIDS!  Silver medal if you got AIDS.  Good effort, though.  Certainly the right message at the heart of this, of course.

As far as the condom inflation game goes, it was supposed to show how much pressure/volume a condom can take before it pops.  Why not take a look at how Miss Australia fares?

Source: The Business Age.