Teenage pregnancy is trendier than metrosexual manscaping.  From celebs like Jamie Lynn Spears to preggers Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old daughter of the Republican VP hopeful, baby bumps on babies are popping up in the most conspicuous places. In the current climate where children are exposed to sexuality through pop culture, Planned Parenthood is more needed than ever.  Yet despite their efforts, they’ve come under fire from conservative groups for their recent campaign, Take Care Down There.  We posted some love for these cheeky PSA’s back in April when the site launched, but after a cross-country summer tour, the safe-sex advocates have been getting crap for their sense of humor.  Planned Parenthood has said they are trying to appeal to their young audience through relatable slang and situations without confusing their messages with fear mongering and scientific lingo.  However, conservative groups are claiming Planned Parenthood isn’t taking the situation seriously by supporting safe-sex and masturbation via comedy sketches that the abstinence-only supported find hokey. But petty arguments aside, with one in four teenage girls already infected with an STD and teen pregnancy on the rise for the first time in almost 15 years, something has got to be done…besides all those teenagers. [ABC News]

There are many ways to let people know you’re into having safe sex. The easiest being to verbalize your needs: “I will not sleep with you unless you use a condom.” If you lived in India, you could always let your phone tell people for you. A cell phone ring tone was launched August 8 and features a singer chanting the word “condom” 50 times. So far it has been downloaded 60,000 times. “A ring tone is a very public thing,” said Yvonne MacPherson, the country director of BBC World Service Trust India. “It’s a way to show you are a condom user and you don’t have any issues with it.” We can think of a few other ringtones we wish existed…

Condoms. So important—yet so not stylish. Until now! For years, condoms haven’t exactly been the next Birkin bag. Instead, condoms are what you peruse in the drugstore aisle late at night, and the big decision is whether to get Trojans or Durex. Recently, though, as safe sex has become the golden rule, fashion designers, hip artists, and condom manufacturers have begun offering up a bevy of stylish choices when it comes to rubbers. Is there really a Marc Jacobs condom? Found out that and more after the jump.

Do you have a license to lay? Brooklyn-based STF(ree) is making private issued cards so your potential lovers can check the results of your last two AIDS/HIV tests. No lying, no guessing, no putting off the inevitable. All you have to do is fill out their enrollment form and ask your doctor to send your lab results to STF. Then you’ll be issued an ID card. Using your personal number on the card and a private password you provide, people you’ve selected can call up the information line 24/7 and find out the truth about the party in your pants. It’s a small price to pay for some piece of mind to go with that piece of ass! Maybe this would come in handy if they ever legalize prostitution... [Via Boinkology]

We scored a nice little quote in Page Six Magazine‘s story on “Generation Unsafe Sex”, but some of the other people interviewed left us with the question above. A half dozen or so NYC singles, as well as a Jezebel blogger and a sex educator, were interviewed about the topic of safe sex (and the fact that more and more people are not having it)—this quote, in particular, stuck out:

“Once STDs and death seemed synonymous. Today, the accepted reality is that the STDs one is likely to contract through unprotected sex are more mundane, which is underscored by the fact that so many of them are cured using the same antibiotics you’d use for a sinus infection.”

“I’m shooting a commercial for safe sex. How ironic. Because I don’t have that.”—Tila Tequila via TMZ

While sticking a bunch of microbicides up your hoo-ha may seem like a bad idea, turns out it may save your vaj from the likes of HIV and other STD’s.  Researchers are currently conducting clinical trials at UCLA’s AIDS Institute for microbicides, a shield you would schmear in your vajane.  Nowadays, women must rely on making sure their male sexual partners use condoms, but the hope is that this type of safeguard will help ladies take matters into their own hands. The study in the U.S. is based on the larger 12-month trial of microbicides involving 10,000 people currently underway in South Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda and Belgium. Fingers crossed we girls can get some protection! [Newswise]

So, you know that story we’ve been chatting about lately? The one about how one in four New Yorkers with multiple partners (potentially a reflection of the rest of the country) doesn’t use condoms all the time? Well in addition to our poll(s) on the subject, I decided I wanted to pester the guys on my IM about this because I think it’s kind of easy to say to blame dudes for low condom usage—after all, they’re the ones who have to strap ‘em on either at their own discretion or because the chick they’re having sex with makes them in order to get any nookie. So do dudes leap at any opportunity to go rubber-less? Let’s find out.

The November elections seem close, and now the political powerhouses of John McCain and Barack Obama are getting even closer to the things that matter most to us. Both are faces imprinted on a line of condoms—but we gotta ask…who would you rather have protecting YOUR crotch? [ObamaCondoms.com and McCainCondoms.com]

During Antarctica’s long winters, the McMurdo research base has a staff of only 125 scientists—but if any of them are in a position to get lucky, they won’t have to brave the cold to buy condoms. (Do they even have drugstores in Antarctica anyway?) Nearly 16,500 condoms were delivered to the base last month and will be available free of charge throughout the year. “Since everybody knows everyone, it becomes a little bit uncomfortable,” said Bill Henriksen, the base’s manager. And you thought your pool of men was small. [Reuters]

Traipsing through Europe with nothing but a briefcase of glass phalluses and a bunch of condoms, the silly and sexy team of Noah and Baron make us happy they brought along a video camera to catch all the hilarity on tape. Sent around the continent by Lifestyles condoms to talk about safe sex and cultural differences in the sack, these boys pull lovable Harold & Kumar-style hijinks as they try to cop a feel in each country.  They hang off a balcony throwing condoms and telling people to go eff themselves in Amsterdam, they ask drunken Slovaks about penis size, and they get Swedes to come out of their shy shells and talk smack.  The film shorts are like tagging along with your favorite guy friends from college as they try to get laid, but they’ll at least succeed at making you laugh.  [Ad Freak]

Trojan has asked Johnny Depp to be the spokesman for their brand, hoping that he’ll star in TV commercials promoting magnums (we knew it!) and help them with their sex safe campaign in which the brand plans to send free condoms to Third World countries. DListed suggests that the tagline for the Magnum campaign be, “If if it’s big enough for Johnny, it’s big enough for you”, which cracks us up and also makes us kind of hot. [DListed]

In today’s “Like, duh?” news, a new study suggests that teaching teens about safe sex not only might lead to less teen pregnancy, but also does not increase the number of sexually active teens or incidents of STDs. Not that the debate over abstinence education versus sex education is going to be over any time soon. [News-Medical.net]

The number of cases of syphilis is on the rise. In Britain, there are 10 times the number of cases there were a decade ago, and France has almost 16 times the number of cases that it did just three years ago. Thankfully, we have antibiotics these days, so if you get syphilis, you most likely won’t die from it like poet Charles Baudelaire and painter Paul Gauguin might have. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have safe sex, because we just looked up “syphilis” on Wikipedia and this disease can do some nasty things to you—and these photos just show the PG version! [Note: Don’t look if you’re easily grossed out.] [International Herald Tribune]