The Importance of Being Fit and Snug

Last week, I got a “package received” notification in my inbox. For 99 percent of the student body, this would be a thrilling moment. Well, the people sitting next to me when I opened it at the Nest certainly were shocked to see what they may have thought was a package from my grandmother. Nestled in between a complimentary sticker sheet and a shipping notification was an enormous trash bag filled with 500 Trojan condoms of assorted types.

In the whirlwind of autumn and its accompanying melodramas, I had entirely forgotten about the Condom Grant I had applied for earlier in the summer. The Great American Condom Campaign gives these grants, where individuals can apply for their school group to receive hundreds of condoms.

Needless to say, I had been awarded the grant, and it came in the forms of Her Pleasure, Fire & Ice and Extra Ribbed.

Like giddy children with our pillowcase full of Halloween candy, my friends and I dug through the bag to discover that the bottom was layered with none other than the infamous Magnum. There must have been at least 80 of the little golden packages, and hilarity quickly gave way to confusion about these over-sized rubbers.

I was one of the people in charge with distributing these fun-sized bundles of joy to the University of Mary Washington community. What were we supposed to do with the ones that required a little extra “fun”? We couldn’t pass them out at dorms or attach them to VOX’s holiday condom-grams. If given to the majority of men at the college, or anywhere in the U.S. for that matter, the Magnums would be not only useless and insulting, but also potentially unsafe.

Wearing a condom that is too large for you makes it more likely that it will slip off during sex. Stopping intercourse to play “hunt the rubber” in your partner’s orifices is way less sexy than that game title would suggest. Not to mention, missing condoms lead to missing periods. And that leads to missing classes. We’re all about academics here, folks.

Since there isn’t a formal sizing system for condoms, your best bet is to just try some on and make sure they fit. If there’s room between your skin and the latex, you should step it down a notch or try a brand labeled with a more “snug” fit. Conversely, if there’s space at the base of the shaft that the material doesn’t cover, you might need a size up. That extra inch or two can make a difference in a lot of things, and STD transmission is one of them.

Gentlemen, when you wrap it, pay attention to fit. It means more than just choosing which pretty wrapper color looks best with your complexion. And if any of you need a Magnum, or think you do, I have 80 that need a home.