The Ryan Thomas Collection

This past Wednesday, Cyndi Lauper and Lady Gaga hit the morning show circuit through New York City to promote MAC’s VIVA GLAM lipstick. Visiting Good Morning America and The Today Show – 4th Hour, this dynamic duo brought the topic of safe sex,as well as HIV prevention and awareness, to morning television. As spokespeople for VIVA GLAM, these two pop stars are pushing to promote the $14 tube of lipstick that benefits MAC’s AIDS FUND for fighting HIV/AIDS, with all dollars of each sale going to the foundation – specifically towards their women’s initiative.

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This duo could not be a better fit for the VIVA GLAM initiative, and all those involved in the upstart of this promotion are clever producers in this natural combination. Lady Gaga is like a Cyndi Lauper of the 2000s. Everyone keeps posing the question of whether Lady Gaga is the next Madonna, but I think there may be better odds that she will be more like Cyndi Lauper. The two share similar styles, personalities and talents. Like the interviewers of morning talk, I digress from the topic at hand. Lady Gaga and Cyndi were both very skilled in their ability to pull the conversations away from pop talk and back to the important issue of safe sex and women. The two women were partnered, in part, due to statistics that the rate of new HIV infection rates are jumping for women ages 17-24 and 39-60 at a staggering pace. These two musical artists fit into one of these groups and are asking women to buy this lipstick for themselves and to give it to their sisters, mothers, friends, etc and remind them to protect themselves when having sex.

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A key issue at hand is the need for women to get the men they engage in sex with to utilize condoms. Lady Gaga and Cyndi want to empower women to not only be prepared, but to force their male partners to “wrap it up.” Men will make a lot of excuses not to use a condom and women need to recognize the power they have in a sexual relationship to enforce a rule of condom protection. The situation is no time to be submissive to the desires of a man. It comes down to sheer safety. These two women make it clear that HIV/AIDS is not a gay disease and women have to protect themselves against HIV. They had candid conversations with their interviewers about this topic. They were pushing for the hard sale of their lipstick and rightfully so. More importantly, they did not skirt around the idea of safe sex and condom use, despite the morning time slot of their discussion.

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As a young gay man, HIV/AIDS is one of those topics that tend to be  automatically associated with this sexual orientation, a leftover from the 1980s. My gay generation has been less directly effected by the epidemic, and statistics show a rise in new infections amongst gay males in their 20s. Researchers believe this may be due, in part, to the fact that younger generations who not only escaped witnessing the devastation of the epidemic in the 80s, also see HIV positive individuals living productive and healthy lives on medications. Seemingly, HIV appears to be treatable to many. I have heard one to many stories about my gay male friends having too much trust in their partners and risking infection. However, our gay community is constantly bombarded with information on HIV, as well as with free condoms and HIV testing. What I find more scary are the stories I have heard from my straight girlfriends over the years.

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It seems a benefit of the gay man – straight girl relationship is the liberty girls tend to feel in expressing and discussing their sexual escapades with their gay best friend. The idea here is that gay men are probably less likely to judge promiscuous behavior and cast the girl as immoral, and shall we say, “slut.” With this in mind, I have had the privilege of providing an ear to many of my girlfriends and a safe place for them to divulge their dark and dirty sexual encounters.  After providing this service for years and years now, I am constantly shocked at the lack of safe sex practices these women have employed. It is scary and it is shameful that our patriarchal society has yet to truly attack this dilemma head on. I have found that the core fear of these women is that of getting pregnant (and even this fear is subdued with the availability of Plan B). Consistently, I have heard my girlfriends tell me that they are on birth control, so everything is okay. The thought that they could catch any STD, let alone HIV, does not cross their mind because they are so focused on not creating a baby. Well ladies, birth control only prevents you from getting pregnant and if a male ejaculates inside you, you are putting yourself at risk for a plethora of STDs, including HIV. HIV is not a gay disease and your birth control does nothing to fight it, and while we are at it, “pulling out” does not prevent the spread of HIV, as the disease lives in pre-ejaculatory fluid (to use more scientific terminology).

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Watching Lady Gaga and Cyndi Lauper talk about this issue made me extremely happy, because I felt like I was the only one telling the girlfriends in my life that they have to be more consistent and diligent in their condom use. Yes, it is also the responsibility of the male, but his chances of catching HIV are far less than a women’s when not using protection. Both parties need to be involved in the safety of their actions, but women need to enforce a condom rule. Safe sex is not just birth control.

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I have made it a point to ask each girl about their condom use when they divulge their sexual escapades to me, and I encourage all the gay men out there, as well as all the mothers, all the sisters and all the girlfriends to make it part of the storytelling and apart of the conversation before and after the stories are told. As society becomes arguably more and more sexually liberated, it is pivotal that these conversations happen. Buy a tube of MAC VIVA GLAM lipstick for you. Buy one for a woman in your life and like Lady Gaga and Cyndi Lauper say in the clip below, hand it to them and tellthem you care about them, want them to be safe and to use a condom.

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I am getting off my soap box now, but you should continue scrolling and watch the clip below.

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