Did You Hear About The Girl Who . . . ?: Contemporary Legends, Folklore, and Human Sexuality

Chapter 2: Contraceptive Jelly on Toast and Other Unintended Consequences of Sexuality Education

2 CONTRACEPTIVE JELLY ON TOAST AND OTHER UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF SEXUALITY EDUCATION ❏ A doctor reported that he had fitted a 23-year-old woman with a diaphragm . When she returned to the doctor for a check-up, the doctor noticed a purple stain on the center of the diaphragm. When he asked the woman about it, she told him it was a stain from the jelly she used with it. He asked her what brand she was using and she answered, “Smucker’s grape jelly.” A first reaction to this story is usually laughter at the punch line, followed by disbelief about this being a “true” story, and amazement that, if it is true, anyone could make such a ridiculous mistake. On one level, many of the stories in this chapter can be read as focusing on the ignorance of the client/patient, but another more useful reading is that the educator/health care practitioner was at fault for presenting information in ways that facilitated misunderstandings. There are many ways, which will be explored throughout this book, in which folklore can help sexuality and health educators in their practice. This chapter focuses on one potential role of folklore—to 17 point out the nature of errors, whether they have actually occurred or not, that can be made in educational processes. The following stories focus on attempts at contraception, so the consequences of the misunderstandings are serious—unplanned pregnancies. While the ungainly attempts are often presented humorously in the story, the results are often devastating for the woman (and man) involved. The opening story and the one following were reported by a student who heard them on her father’s AutoDigest tapes of an obstetrics/gynecology conference. It is important to note that even though these stories were collected from a seemingly reliable source, they have all the earmarks of contemporary legends. A doctor reported that another woman had been using a diaphragm, but had immediately become pregnant. When he examined the diaphragm, he found the center was cut out. Because there had been no center when she had been fitted for the diaphragm, she cut it out of hers. A similar story was published in the journal Hospital Pharmacy in 1987. A student nurse reported that she had been teaching new mothers about child care and contraception: After giving one of the lectures on contraception, a fifteen-yearold , who had received no prenatal care, reacted in astonishment to what I said about how contraceptive jellies should be used. After explaining how the jellies needed to be applied vaginally prior to intercourse, the mother realized for the first time how she had become pregnant. She had purchased a contraceptive jelly from a retail pharmacy and routinely had been placing it on her toast at breakfast! She said that she had received no instruction on how the jelly was supposed to be used and just thought that jellies were for toast—not for intravaginal use. (Cohen, 1987, p. 956) CONTRACEPTIVE JELLY ON TOAST 18 Although this version was reported in 1987, the story is very persistent and made a big comeback ten years later. A reader wrote to advice columnist Ann Landers (Landers, 1997): It seems a woman has filed suit against a small mom-and-pop pharmacy because she purchased a tube of contraceptive jelly, spread it on a piece of toast and ate it. She then had unprotected sex, believing she was “safe” and became pregnant. The contraceptive came with instructions, but the woman says the pharmacist should have put a specific warning on the box saying it wasn’t effective if eaten. She is asking for a half million dollars, even though she is quoted as saying, “Who has time to sit around reading directions these days, especially when you’re sexually aroused?” One contributor to FoafTale News reported that this story of oral use of contraceptive jelly was circulating widely in May and June, 1997, through the media and Internet (Hiscock, 1998). The same contributor also reported an e-mail of a first-person narrative by a public health nurse that had been forwarded to him. When a pregnant woman is asked by the nurse about her contraceptive practices, the woman shows the nurse “vaginal foaming pills (about the size of a Necco wafer). She said, ‘I’ve been taking them just like the doctor told me—every time I have sex I take one. They...