In the middle of a long and stressful day in her job in finance, Farah Kabir nipped out of the office in her lunch break and ran to the local Boots to pick up some condoms. She grabbed the first ones she saw, rushed to the till and, just before handing the lurid box of Durex over to the cashier, locked eyes with the person queueing behind her. It was her boss.
Understandably mortified, she shared her horror story with her old schoolfriend, Sarah Welsh. A doctor specialising in gynaecology and sexual health, Welsh tells me that Kabir’s experience got her thinking. “Of course it’s natural to feel embarrassed, but I’ve seen the rise in difficult-to-treat sexually transmitted infections, and condoms are the only safe, non-hormonal method of contraception that is effective in protecting against them. Yet there’s still this strange taboo around women being able to buy them. That’s when we got really excited about what we could do to make a difference.”
This summer, Welsh and Kabir launched Hanx, a new brand of stylishly packaged condoms with a cream and gold colour scheme that is more upmarket Scandi stationery than contraception. They are also vegan (most condoms contain an animal byproduct called casein, which they have replaced with a plant alternative), and have a special “clean” scent, as research revealed that many women were put off using condoms by their smell. They are sold in lingerie shops and yoga centres as well as online, where they cost £6 for a pack of three. Welsh says: “It’s something you’d feel proud to carry. At the moment, buying condoms brings on feelings of shame, and we want to combat that. We want to empower women to take control of their sexual health.”
Will Welsh and Kabir succeed in making women feel happier buying and using condoms? Last year, in a survey of 2,000 people by FPA, the sexual health charity, nearly one in five people said they thought it can be embarrassing to buy condoms, nearly one in 10 said they thought it is still taboo for women to buy and carry them and, crucially, more than one in five said that on at least one occasion they had not used one during sex because they don’t enjoy it as much. “We do need to acknowledge that some people have experiences with condoms that don’t feel good,” says FPA’s Bekki Burbidge. “We need to move beyond just saying ‘use a condom’ and find a way to make using them an enjoyable part of sex.”
The design of the condom has barely changed since the 1950s, and it works pretty well when it comes to preventing pregnancies and the transmission of STIs, without messing around with women’s hormones. But it can’t do any of that, of course, if couples choose not to use them because of how they look or feel. A new wave of entrepreneurs and scientists are trying to change that, and transform the condom – and our sex lives.
The newest of these innovations to hit the market is a condom that comes in 66 different sizes, called MyOne, that launched in the US earlier this month and will land in the UK on Valentine’s Day next year. “Size is a problem,” says Davin Wedel, CEO of Global Protection Corp, MyOne’s manufacturer. “You can add studs and ribs and shapes to condoms, but it doesn’t matter how many bells and whistles you add, or how much thinner you make them, unless you fix the fact that they don’t fit the majority of men.”
The average condom length is about 185mm (7.3in; in the industry, condoms are measured in millimetres). That decision was made by regulators who erred on the side of longer penises, to make sure as many as possible were protected from STIs. But a review of existing penis-size studies from across the world found the average length of an erect penis to be 131.2mm (5.2in) – in fact, a US study found lengths varied from 40mm to 260mm (1.6in to 10.2in), with more than 80% coming in at shorter than your average condom. “If you have a very small penis, or a very large one, you cannot buy a condom to be protected,” says Wedel. Condoms that are too long have to be rolled up, which can feel like an uncomfortably tight rubber band around the base of the penis; condoms that are too baggy can feel humiliating and can slip off; condoms that are too short don’t protect the base of the penis from skin-to-skin contact STDs; condoms that are too tight can feel constricting. Average-sized condoms, says Wedel, only cover around 12% of men. MyOne condoms will come in a range of 10 lengths and 10 circumferences, and customers can calculate their own size by printing a measuring kit off the website.
Wedel has been in the condom game for 30 years, since he was an undergraduate student at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Back then, “saying the word condom out loud was taboo”, he says. When he heard that one out of every 100 college students had Aids, and that condoms were the only thing that could prevent it spreading, he and a friend decided to sell packs with a picture of their university mascot, Jumbo the Elephant, and the slogan, “A safe Jumbo is a happy Jumbo”, for $1 a piece. “At that time, the need was to normalise condoms, to make them as socially acceptable as toothpaste,” he says. That is why he went on to invent the glow-in-the-dark condom. Wedel hopes his 66 sizes will help men to find the perfect fit – but acknowledges that this variety of different-sized condoms is already on sale in the UK under the TheyFit brand. And, sure, size matters, but it can only take us so far: the FPA’s survey revealed that 14% of respondents said that on at least one occasion they had not used a condom during sex because they don’t like how it feels.
For Dr Aravind Vijayaraghavan at the University of Manchester, the solution is to create a new material. “There has been very little change in what condoms are made of,” he says. “It’s been latex for as long as modern condoms have existed, but that material has some limitations. One of the most common complaints is that it doesn’t provide a particularly natural feel.” Plus, manufacturers can only confirm that it works about 98% of the time. When, four years ago, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation launched its challenge for developers to design the next generation of condoms, Vijayaraghavan had his big idea. He had been working with graphene, a form of carbon that is 200 times stronger than steel but also incredibly flexible, and he realised that, if added to latex, it could help create the stronger, thinner condom that the world was waiting for. His team won the grant, and are now working with a manufacturer. Vijayaraghavan says he could potentially have a condom ready for market within two years.
Graphene’s hexagonal molecular structure was also the inspiration for the invention of Hex, a condom launched by Lelo, the Swedish brand best known for its designer sex toys; a 36-pack costs £29.90 online. “Our biggest single discovery was that it wasn’t the material or shape that needed to change, it was the structure,” says Steve Thomson, Lelo’s global marketing director. Hex’s USP is its specially produced latex with raised interconnected hexagons on the inside of the condom, meaning the surface holds to the penis without constricting, “like a tread on Formula One tyres when you’re driving in the wet”, says Thomson. This, he says, transforms how the condom feels: “Our clinical studies have proved that more than 73% of users could tell the difference. But because of the laws surrounding condom marketing, you’re not allowed to speak to the pleasure benefits.” Companies are not allowed to promote their condoms as “more pleasurable”, because it is a difficult quality to quantify.
But, of course, pleasure is what this is all about. And that, Charles Powell says, is what makes his invention stand apart from all the others. The Vietnam veteran turned oil rig worker turned film producer turned condom inventor says the other developers have “just rearranged the deckchairs on the Titanic, because they all cover the full penis. They’re not going to increase condom usage, because nobody likes them. I’m the only game in town, the only product that will raise condom usage around the world, because people want to wear the Galactic Cap.”
The Galactic Cap, so called because “the pleasure is out of this world”, is made of polyurethane (used in some condoms) and fits over the top of the penis, securing like a plaster, using a medical-grade adhesive, capturing the semen in an airtight reservoir. Powell says it protects both against pregnancy and, so long as there are no sores or abrasions on the penis, against any STDs that are not transmitted by skin to skin contact. “This is a stop gap between wearing a full condom and not using anything. If you know who you’re with and you feel safe, and your partner doesn’t want to use hormonal birth control, this can be a great thing.”
He tells me how he ended up turning his talents to prophylactics: “I had an editor I worked with for three years who came down with HIV. He was like a brother to me. It so shocked me I thought, there’s got to be something better than a traditional condom.” Five years ago, he took $50,000 from an insurance policy to design the product, before launching a video campaign on Indiegogo that raised $100,000 and received a million views within three days.
He sells the condoms online for $20 or $100 for 10 – he issues a disclaimer that “it’s an experimental prototype, not FDA approved, not tested for STDs, HIV or pregnancy, use at your own risk – basically, don’t sue me”. He says the FDA takes two years and $2m for testing, so he is currently “flying under their radar, because nobody has ever got regulatory approval for a glans sheath, something that covers the head of the penis for sex. There is a law on the books that says it’s illegal to do.” But he believes this can be done, and in the meantime, he hopes to get a CE mark and start selling in Europe, where clinical trials are faster and cheaper. What makes him so sure he will succeed? The customer feedback includes comments such as, “Holy shit, these things are amazing” and “Charles Powell, you, sir, are a genius”. “It’s hugely exciting,” he says, “because it could change the world – this could revolutionise how people have sex.”
Some developers hope to transform our sex lives by other means, such as the makers of Flex, an alternative to the menstrual cup that sits at the base of the cervix, meaning women can have sex while on their period with “no mess”, as the website puts it. You can sign up for a trial online for $15 and receive a 24-pack, which lasts for about three cycles.
All of these condoms also aim to take the awkward messiness out of sex, to remove the obstacles that get in the way of lovers feeling as close as possible. Will they make us happier in bed? The first question has to be, will couples actually put them on? As Burbidge of the FPA puts it: “If something’s uncomfortable when you’re having sex, it’s hard to relax and enjoy yourself. So if these innovations improve on what we’ve got and create condoms that people feel more comfortable buying and carrying, and that are more enjoyable to use, that’s great – as long as they also use them.”
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