By Josh Hughes
On Thursday, May 10, Planned Parenthood Generation WWU and Mt. Baker Planned Parenthood put on the fifth Condom Fashion Show at Western. The event highlighted sexual education awareness and empowerment, and featured 10 models wearing their best condom fits. Titled “Out of This World,” this year’s theme was all about space, which was reflected in the various teams’ costumes.
The evening started with an improv performance by Dead Parrots Society. Ruben, Neco and Bailey, who make up a little less than half of the group, performed three different skits. Topics included a condom covered in spiders, “sex with me” jokes about coffee pots and an astronaut with an Irish accent.
Next the first group of models came out, flaunting their spacey, condom-centric fits. In between the models going down the “runway” of Fraser Hall 102, the MCs gave out prizes for a raffle that all attendees that donated to Planned Parenthood outside the venue entered. A variety of Bellingham restaurants, breweries and companies provided goods for the raffles, including Aslan, MOD Sock and Zane Burger.
Dispersed throughout the fashion show were two different segments featuring WWU Peer Sexual Health Educators and Mount Baker Planned Parenthood, respectively. The Western group performed a short skit advocating for explicit consent in sexual encounters and extensive education on sex education.
“Our purpose here is to first ask: who got a crappy sex education in high school here?” asked one of the organization members to an audience that almost unanimously raised their hands.
“Our goal is of course to try and remedy that and give incoming college students more information about how they can take control of their sex lives,” she continued.
Fitting with the theme of the evening, the group’s skit involved an alien having their first sexual encounter on earth.
The MBPP gave a series of games for the audience to participate in, all of which related again to sex education and awareness. The first game was a taste test where volunteering audience members were blindfolded and had to guess the flavor of edible lube that they were trying. Not entirely surprisingly, after four rounds, not a single person guessed the right flavor.
Their next interactive game had volunteers stretch different types of condoms to see which would go the farthest without breaking. In the last game, two volunteers were blindfolded and the audience had to help them pin a condom on the genitalia of two cardboard figures.
After all ten fashion contestants had gone down the runway, the audience got a chance to vote on their favorite team. The audience winner was Ur-Anus, whose costume was a Star Wars Sith Lord inspired fit complete with red and black condoms.
Lastly, the event coordinators gave away third, second and first places for the event. Spacey Lacy won third place, Space Gays won second and Denim Divas won first place with their blue leotard and condom hat.
Those looking to donate to Planned Parenthood can visit www.ppaction.org/mbpp. The WWU Peer Sexual Health Educators are part of the Prevention and Wellness Services on campus. They provide a variety of services such as CASAS Sexual Assault Support, Blood Drives, Alcohol & Other Drug Education and Support, and last but not least, Sexual Health Education and Outreach.
Space Junk:
-Victoria Campbell
-Jonathon Flynn
-Alyssa Kaufman
-Megan Pelton
Reinstate Pluto as a Planet Coalition:
-William Saimo
-Josh Foster
-Pearl Hughes
-Madka Iwamoto
Salty Dolls:
-Piper Tollbert
-Emmilee Ladcross-Lambert
-Hannah Goebel
-Stella Harvey
Condominatrix
-Nathaniel Griffin
-Colbi Jensen
-Gwen Frost
Ur-anus:
-Bethany Roulston
-Tess Davis
-Emily Beers
-Kiara Bogovich-Rojo
Spacey Lacey:
-Martha Jeanice
-Blair Ziegan
-Hannah Martinez
Cosmic Chicas:
-Cathleen VanBuren
-Claudia Wagener
Denim Diva:
-Leah Reiss
-Graciela Gomez
Max Modem and the Mainframe:
-Kristen Estep
-Emma Pyzer
-Sasha Richart
-Lauren Tierney
Space Gays:
-Mary Sprague
-Madison Phares
-Katherine Fry