I can see why the Evolve advertising campaign for Trojan condoms could be considered sort of annoying, but I’m dumbfounded at how it can be construed as offensive.



The ad, which debuted earlier this week, opens with a classy lounge full of cocktail-swilling swine unsuccessfully hitting on women. After getting rejected by a blonde at the bar, one pig scampers off to a condom machine, and is transformed into a sort of schlubby-looking dude who successfully chats up the babe who rejected him when he looked like the movie character Babe.

The way the woman instantly knows the dude is packing a prophylactic doesn’t make sense exactly; did the pigs who made the unwanted advances try to woo women with promises of unprotected sex? Strangely, both the CBS and Fox networks have refused to air the ad, not for logical inconsistency, but for its alleged offensive content.

After watching the ad twice, Fox’s supposition that it somehow stresses the prevention of pregnancy remains a mystery – for me at least.

On the blog Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte notes that networks have no problem broadcasting spots for male sexual enhancement products, and suggests that the Evolve ad is getting heat for being too respectful to women, and not fearful enough of pro life letter campaigns.

But maybe the agenda here is anti-women as much as it is anti-fun. Neither Fox or CBS had a problem with Trojan’s last campaign, which according to the New York Times, “urged condom use because of the possibility that a partner might be HIV-positive, perhaps unknowingly.” It seems like the TV stations think condom use is OK as long as sex is portrayed as disease-ridden and scary. If it’s something that’s preventing a pregnancy from occurring during a bar hook up, apparently that’s a problem.

Of course, if the pigs had evolved into men after, say, ordering a name brand vodka or pulling out an expensive cell phone, networks probably wouldn’t utter a single objecting squeal.