Backstage, models adorned their latex creations and readied to show off their hand-made prophylactic attire to the crowd.
Everything from dark fairies to gowns to housewives was represented in contraceptive style.
The Condom Fashion Show, hosted by the Cultural Forum, was the last event as part of AIDS Awareness Week at the University Friday night.
Participants modeled costumes made from condoms and walked down the runway in the EMU Ballroom.
The event was sponsored by the Women’s Center, the Heath Center, Peer Health Educators, Students for Global Health, Students for Choice, SWAT, LGBTQA and HIV Alliance.
University junior Lingheshwari Kakkanaiah, the Cultural Forum’s contemporary culture coordinator, ran the condom show for the first time this year and modeled in it. Kakkanaiah’s involvement with the show and the Cultural Forum started her freshman year.
“I really like the Condom Fashion Show because it is a fun way to display such a serious topic,” Kakkanaiah said. “Usually it’s a bunch of scary statistics with AIDS.”
For the show, Kakkanaiah wore a red Snuggie with an Oregon duck-billed hat and attached unused condoms to the front of her robe spelling out the letters “BCS” for Bowl Championship Series because of the Civil War game the next day. Several of the other fashion show entries were condom costumes modeled after football jerseys.
Kakkanaiah said the event is important to her because she lost two cousins to AIDS. She added that her dad was a biotech engineer and changed his field of research to stem cells after her cousins died. Her dad has even taken to donating $10,000 a year to AIDS research. University student Greg Kirby co-hosted the fashion show Friday night with the help of fellow University student Brian Allen, and both told jokes in between introducing the models, skits from the SWAT team and the Peer Health Educators.
Kirby has been involved with the LGBTQA since he was a freshman at the University, but it was his first time going to or being involved with the Condom Fashion Show. He even learned that he was hosting the show Thursday morning and got the scripts the morning of the show.
“It was a great way to spend a Friday night,” Kirby said, adding that he enjoyed the football player costumes the most.
SWAT read statistics about AIDS and told the audience how much it costs at the Health Center to get tested while dressed as sexually themed superheroes. Meanwhile, Peer Health Educators performed a skit where they put a life-sized condom over the body of a person to demonstrate how to properly wear a condom.
The show also screened old AIDS awareness public service announcements featuring celebrities such as Neil Patrick Harris, Sinbad and Pauly Shore.
Audience member Karina Dewart said she came to watch the fashion show and found the show entertaining and funny.
The show was a good way to inform the public about “safe sex” in a lighthearted way, Dewart said.
“I really liked the models outfits,” Dewart said. “It was really cool the way they put their outfits together using condoms.”
One Condoms also sponsored the event and gave out free condoms in tin cans in every other seat.
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