The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

LifeStyles of the Rich and the Famous

Nayeli, maybe I'm just a little more cynical than you are, but I don't read the Miley Cyrus condom non-deal as a "huge loss," but rather a huge gain for both the starlet and LifeStyles. Though of course you're right that it would be wonderful if someone with the influence and reach Cyrus has among teen girls took on the issue of safe sex (and that missed opportunity, indeed, is a loss), I think the LifeStyles offer has a lot more to do with the buzz generated by even the proposal of the pairing. LifeStyles gets gratis association with the Hannah Montana brand, with all its increasingly fraught but consistently lucrative connotations. Canny Miley gets to continue her coy, stutter-step march toward sexpot-dom, chastely refusing the condom deal but grabbing some column space that portrays her not just as a cute little kid any longer.

I'm also not sure, even if Miley were to take on the issue of safe sex as her particular project, that becoming a spokeswoman for a condom company would be the best soapbox—setting aside issues of objectification and commercialization, women don't wear condoms. It's true that women shouldn't be passive about their sexual health. But why should the onus for safe sex be put only on the woman, as this kind of marketing seems to suggest—couldn't, say, Zac Efron slap that oh-so-manly mug on a condom box and encourage teenage boys to take responsibility to wear them, and not just when nagged to by a pretty girl?