By Sharanya Gopinathan
Vitamin Stree has been on such a roll lately. Just last week, we were jigging along to their new music video Fit Is Not a Body Type. But their latest offering may be their best yet.
In this video, women (and one dude) tell us about the different forms of contraceptives available to us, like the pill, the ring, Intra-Uterine Devices (IUDs), condoms, emergency contraceptives, vasectomies and pulling out. They also discuss the myths surrounding these methods, the correct ways to use them (emergency contraceptives are for emergencies only!), and the side effects that each method may have (it even busts the global myth that The Pill causes uncontrollable weight gain: It may cause weight gain, but only up to about two kilograms).
The video, while being informative, completely relatable and understandable, does that thing where you make a hundred jokes in the hopes that three land, and that’s pretty much exactly the number of jokes that worked here. The best, of course, was when they said The Pill was the “rapper name” of a combination of progesterone and oestrogen, and I have to congratulate them for calling “pulling out” a way of pulling a Kanye Interruptus on yourself.
The only bone I have to pick with this video, besides the bouts of unnecessary singing, which I can forgive, is that it listed pulling out as a method of contraception. Considering that this is a method that’s been known to fail for many reasons (including that pre-ejaculate material can contain sperm, mistiming your own release, general unreliability and dependence on a man to do something on time, etc), it feels a bit unnecessary to find it in a video that otherwise deals with actual and relatively more fool-proof methods of contraception.