Owner gives up the Phight

Harness closure mini-dress from Phi’s 2010 Spring collection

Another casualty of the recession: It’s sad to see this young and creative label, Phi, disappear! I was looking forward to their LA store opening next year. I have several pairs of their harem pants and they are to die for! The straps and buckles in the 2010 collection would have gone over well with the bondage set! Sigh! Perhaps the designers will be able to produce the designs for other houses in a few years.

The New York Times
December 24, 2009
Front Row
So Young, So Smart, So Gone
By ERIC WILSON

THE news this week of the demise of Phi, a tough-edged collection designed by Andreas Melbostad, a protégé of Calvin Klein and Donna Karan, surprised many fashion insiders. After six years in the market, the collection was just starting to gain traction beyond the close-knit crowd of editors and retailers who packed its Chelsea showroom each season.

“We are all stunned,” said Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-porter.com, which sells Phi’s skintight biker pants ($595) and leather ankle boots ($825). “It was one of our favorite collections of the season.”

The poor outlook for luxury goods was cited as the reason for closing the company, and some of the label’s fans suggested it was too “niche” to survive through the recession. The spring collection, which will not be produced, included bandage jeans and dresses with scads of harness closures, so perhaps they had a point. The clothes always looked sort of as if Victoria’s Secret had been hijacked by the Hells Angels.

But its failure was still sobering because the label was a pet project of Susan Dell, a decent designer in her own right and the wife of Michael Dell, the computer tycoon. And according to Phi’s executives, the company was still growing. In addition to selling to Neiman Marcus and Holt Renfrew, it has a large store in SoHo and planned to open a second in Los Angeles next year.

“The brand seemed to us as a textbook case of how to build a modern fashion house,” Ms. Massenet said. “The collections were always strong and directional, yet commercial and impeccably made. If a business like that can’t succeed, then I worry for so many other young brands.”

But the management team of Phi, while discussing its future, saw a shrinking opportunity for small luxury labels to succeed. Julia Hansen, the chief executive of the company, which had about 35 employees, said the decision to close was influenced by the many requests from retailers to change designs to make them less expensive. (By designer standards, Phi’s prices were not overly obscene — a pair of harem shorts may have cost $1,495, but they were suede.)

“There was a lot of pressure to go down a path that we felt would compromise the integrity and value of the brand,” Ms. Hansen said. “But this was about being realistic.”

Our Holidays hospital tour

Sensational! When only the best will do

Our Christmas: For the last few days Anya, Taryn, Peter and now Robin and I have been traveling. We are visiting military hospitals entertaining the wounded men, and women. With the sort of entertainment we provide we have to be low-key about publicity so we don’t get the hospital administrators in trouble. I may write about it when it’s over. Security is much tighter since the Fort Hood incident. We will have a quiet Christmas at home and then go to a few more locations before ending our 2009 tour. Of course there isn’t much chance for screening our partners so we are going through a lot of Trojan Naturalamb condoms. They are expensive but in the quantity we buy them we get a nice discount and they give our partners the most natural experience possible while still being protected. We special order them unlubed so we can roll a latex condom on over it to protect ourselves (and our partners - but the concern is mainly with the unknown sexual history and health of our military partners) against HIV while giving our male wounded warriors the most intimate experience possible. For the women, Peter and Robin roll on a latex condom first then the Naturalamb is slipped on so the women also get the most natural sensation from the lamb skin. Unlike double bagging with latex the Naturalamb/latex combination does not have a higher burst rate. Usually, with civilians, there is some whining on the part of guys about not being able to perform while wearing a condom. Perhaps it’s the circumstances they find themselves in but all the military men who have been our partners (there is a lottery) have been able to perform very well while wearing the lambskin/latex combination. We don’t do anything kinky, it’s just good plain vanilla sex with the girls in pointe shoes (Freeds or Gaynors) or ballet boots. For the guys who can’t get out of bed we will ride astride and that has worked very well. In a few instances we will also give head since all of us have been vaccinated for HPV (with Gardasil) so there is very little chance of getting HPV related throat cancer.

Some of the female wounded have asked Robin and Peter to take them bareback as they want to get pregnant, but as much as our guys would love to honor a wounded partner’s request, for safety reasons they really can’t. Of course we phrase it so it’s the woman’s safety we are concerned about. Plus, there would be a huge stink if DNA testing showed one of our guys was the father and counting back – and you know how people love to count - it was found that conception occurred during our entertainment tour visit. The fact that pregnancy is a get-out-of-the-service-free ticket for a woman is another reason we don’t want any of our guys getting active duty women preggers. The military has enough retention problems as it is w/o us contributing the losses.

Misuse of cervical barriers: For women who are not trained in their use or seriously committed to avoiding pregnancy there continues to be a high rate of unintended pregnancies while using a diaphragm or cervical cap. I don’t really think of the barrier as being any less effective, it’s that the user is noncompliant in their use and reproductive biology is intolerant of cutting corners and just-this-once risk taking, especially by young fertile women.. This sort of behavior seems to be especially prevalent in women into the vaginal rubber aspect of a latex fetish lifestyle. My classes for newbie vaginal rubber-girls is helping reduce the failure rate, but there are some women who wanted to get off hormones who were happy to start using a cervical barrier but who aren’t interested in using it correctly and then are upset when they get preggers. Go figure! I expect some of that in teens, but it’s even true with rubber-chicks in their 20s and older who should know better. In my classes we first steer the girls to a knowledgeable and supportive fitter. If the device doesn’t fit correctly its effectiveness is greatly reduced. You would think that would be obvious but you would be surprised at the number of women who want to use a friend, room mate or sisters diaphragm or cap rather than being properly fitted with one of their own. Then we try to emphasize the importance of establishing a wearing regimen as a habit so the wearer isn’t caught unprotected whether for contraception or using the device as a gas guard to protect against embolism during dive-sex or when playing with compressed gasses. And, we try to get them to involve their partner’s in the use of the barrier, learning how to insert it and to check that is positioned correctly to protect the wearer’s cervix. We’ve found a partner showing interest in his girl’s cervical barrier is a major help in keeping the woman compliant.

Wishing all my readers a very Merry Christmas!

Winter and survival

The Winter Solstice at Stonehenge

The Winter Solstice: “Winter Solstice is today, Dec. 21, 2009, the day when the Earth tilts farthest away from the sun. It's the shortest day of the year and the official start of winter. The word "solstice" comes from the Latin "sun stands still" and celebrations of the solstice pre-date Christmas. Stonehenge in England is the site of solstice festivals, apparently dating back some 4,500 years ago, when the site was in its proper cultural context. Some experts now believe that Stonehenge was the site of an ancient barbecue and midwinter celebration that culminated on the Winter Solstice, which also marks the beginning of longer days. From today's Guardian: "Recent analysis of the cattle and pig bones from the era found in the area suggests the cattle used were walked hundreds of miles to be slaughtered for the solstice celebrations – from the west country or west Wales." And from English Heritage: "The monument we see today still inspires awe and admiration. Stonehenge attracts some 800,000 visitors a year and on the summer Solstice, thousands of people gather to watch the sunrise. Although thousands of years older than the Druids, the stone circle witnessed many druidic ceremonies, especially during the 19th century."”

Self-lubrication and survival: I always feel more connected to the old cultures at this time of year. I feel it’s a time of renewal of the spirit as tomorrow the days begin to get longer now that a new cycle of the earth has begun. But long before the solstices and equinoxes were recognized and celebrated as markers on the Earth’s cycle around the sun women’s cycles and natural sexual protection were being established by evolution. Psychologists and anthropologists believe that a woman becoming aroused while she in fear of being attacked is the body’s self-defense mechanism protecting her.

Laymen and defense lawyers often contend that a woman’s genitals being engorged and wet with her natural lube after a sexual attack is evidence that she enticed her attacker or at least ‘enjoyed’ being raped. That’s not so. Almost all women will self lubricate as a natural reaction when they are afraid. The theory is that as the human female evolved women who became sexually aroused when in danger were less likely to be injured if they were taken sexually and therefore more likely to survive the encounter. Over time the surviving self-lubricating women bred daughters who were more likely to self-lubricate when afraid of men and in time it became a natural female survival trait. I wonder if that has something to do with why I have so much more fun having sex when I’m scared.

Rubber Sluts and vaginal rubber

A pair of silicone rubber Oves cervical caps

Oves and the appeal of vaginal rubber: I’m CD3 today (Sunday 12-20-09) and just switched back from my Milex Omniflex (silicone) diaphragm, which I use for flow control after having a menstrual extraction, to an Oves cervical cap. The dome of a silicone diaphragm is not porous and doesn’t stain nearly as badly as natural rubber latex does which, if a girl is using a diaphragm-gas guard in her encounter with a client during which he is allow to handle the device and watch her insert it, makes things look neater. But diaphragms have a maximum depth limitation of 10 meters when used for contraception and gas guards during dive-sex. That depth limitation is not a problem around here as there are so few warm water locations deeper than 10 meters that a couple could comfortably use, but I need an Oves - which has no depth limit for effective protection - when taking a partner at the bottom of my pool, ‘the pit’, which is 68 feet deep by 50 feet wide and 70 feet long.

Rubber-sluts: Returning readers know I love wearing an Oves cap. I’ve got a strong cervical cap fetish for Oves. Having the tiny transparent silicone rubber dome of an Oves sucking on my cervix gives me such confidence that I’m far more sexually assertive when wearing Oves, but for most women and men in the vaginal rubber fetish sub-culture latex is the material of choice. Here in Vegas girls into the vaginal rubber fetish scene are not true ‘Rubber-Sluts’ until they have been wearing vaginal rubber for at least a year and have shown the ability - through exam encounters with a panel of Doms - to use vaginal rubber effectively for their own as well as their partner’s pleasure. Slut as used here is not a pejorative. Several years ago when I first began associating with members of the local rubber fetish community and was called a rubber slut to my face I was all over the Dom who called me that, but found he was giving me a complement rather than denigrating my appearance and morals. In the Vegas rubber fetish community, rubber-slut is a term denoting a very high proficiency level in the fetish sub-specialty of vaginal rubber. Like a black belt in martial arts.

Even though the leaders in the rubber fetish community haven’t paid much attention to my warnings about the risk to the safety of girls wearing latex gas guards when their guys are using compressed gas as a disciplinary tool [For more about that see: my entry for December 9, 2009 ‘the vaginal rubber fetish’] they are paying me to train the new girls entering the fetish and a few of the younger Doms are taking my classes as well. That’s because Rubber Doms interest in vaginal rubber continues to increase here and there is a lack of knowledge about cervical barriers not only among the new girls but some of the Doms who have grown up in the age where so many of their Subs are on hormonal birth control that they are totally ignorant of all aspects of cervical barrier protection. The interest in vaginal rubber by the girls and women who are in their circle of latex-ladies or who are wannabes in a Dom’s entourage continues to rise and the Doms want new girls to have a basic level of vaginal rubber skills before accepting them into their circles. And, something I think is a really good sign is the younger guys are interested in learning how to correctly insert a partner’s diaphragm and then to be able to check that it is covering her cervix before he enters her unprotected himself. I think it is so cool that the younger ones care enough about their subs to make certain they are protected! These guys are also the ones who use a mild electric shock as a disciplinary tool rather compressed gas and it is much safer.

Because there are so few latex gas guard options any more (The Reflexions flat spring diaphragm being the only remaining latex device generally available) Gepetto’s latex shop is producing a full line of coil spring rim devices sized from 50 mm to 95 mm (in 5 mm increments) to sell primarily to rubber fetishists and their girls. However, the device is also good as a basic no-frills starter gas guard for dive-sex. As I’ve mentioned before latex is stretchier and transmits heat better than silicone so even though it doesn’t last as long, is more easily damaged by oils and discolors from vaginal secretions quicker than silicone a lot of very highly skilled Rubber-Sluts are staying with latex devices.

Georgina Parkinson, Star at Royal Ballet, Dies at 71

Georgina Parkinson rehearsing dancers in New York in 2005.

The New York Times
December 19, 2009

Georgina Parkinson, Star at Royal Ballet, Dies at 71
By ANNA KISSELGOFF

“Georgina Parkinson, a ballet mistress and coach at American Ballet Theater whose compelling stage presence and brooding mystery had made her a bright young star of Britain’s Royal Ballet in the 1960s, died on Friday in Manhattan. She was 71.

The cause was complications of cancer, said her son, Tobias Round. Ms. Parkinson lived in Manhattan.

Although her training was in the Royal’s textbook classical style, Ms. Parkinson made her breakthrough in “Les Biches,” an experimental work of 1924 revived for the Royal in 1964 by Bronislava Nijinska.

A dark-haired beauty of striking femininity, Ms. Parkinson nonetheless captured the strong androgyny of the central figure, the Girl in Blue. Coached for weeks by Nijinska, she was widely acclaimed for her unsettling portrayal in the ballet’s commentary on social and sexual mores.

By her own account, Ms. Parkinson was more at home in 20th-century narrative ballets than in the 19th-century classics: she was Odette-Odile in “Swan Lake” and danced the title role in “Raymonda,” in which Clive Barnes, writing in 1969 in The New York Times, called her “golden and glowing.”

Georgina Parkinson was born in Brighton, England, on Aug. 20, 1938. As a child in a convent school, she took a ballet class every Tuesday. Noticing her talent, the school’s nuns suggested to her parents that she pursue further training. After studying with a local teacher, she was admitted to the Sadler’s Wells Ballet school and joined the Royal in 1957.
Despite her respect for the classics, she found her best opportunities in new works. She was in the original cast of Frederick Ashton’s pure-dance “Monotones I” and showed off her dramatic side in his “Enigma Variations,” inspired by the composer Edward Elgar.

Kenneth MacMillan created the role of the Austrian archduke’s mother for her in “Mayerling” and cast her in many of his other ballets. Her Juliet in his “Romeo and Juliet” in New York in 1968 was a stricken heroine, doomed from the start.

In 1978 Ms. Parkinson was invited by Nora Kaye, a former Ballet Theater ballerina, to teach company class for Ballet Theater. By then, Ms. Parkinson had begun to perform character roles, which she continued to do later at Ballet Theater. In 1979 she returned for a year to London to be with her family.

Besides her son, Tobias, of London, who is married to Leanne Benjamin, a Royal Ballet ballerina, Ms. Parkinson is survived by her husband, the photographer Roy Round; a grandson, Thomas; and a sister, Maureen Seiger, of Tel Aviv.

In 1980 Ms. Parkinson returned to Ballet Theater as ballet mistress and continued in that role until recently. This fall she was asked to coach the actresses Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in a new Darren Aronofsky film, “Black Swan,” a thriller set in the world of New York City ballet.

Julie Kent, the Ballet Theater principal who worked most closely with her, said on Friday that Ms. Parkinson had helped her “develop my physicality to the point where I was able to express what was inside of me to a larger audience.”

“I learned everything from her,” Ms. Kent said.”

Alastair Macaulay on The Nutcracker

Scene from New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker

The Nutcracker: In celebration of the Christmas season I’m posting this piece by Alastair Macaulay, dance critic for the NYT.

The New York Times
December 17, 2009
Dance
Depths to Plumb, Sugarplum
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY

As 2009 ends, it’s worth remembering that it has been the centenary of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes’s turning ballet into the genre that was a prime vehicle for modernism. Meanwhile it’s hard to forget that we are deep into the annual “Nutcracker” season, in which tutus, snowflakes, sweets, the Sugarplum Fairy, magic and a child’s vision of transformation all come together. Few American cities are “Nutcracker”-free zones at this time of year; among those in New York, City Ballet’s production by George Balanchine runs now for two and a half more weeks, and that’s just the best known. Are modernism and “The Nutcracker” irreconcilable?

No. Though Diaghilev specialized in showing three or four modern works per evening, he was not above the full-length traditional ballet. He hit upon the idea of his “Sleeping Princess” production in 1921 because he was looking for a long-running blockbuster (along the lines of the hit musical of the day, “Chu Chin Chow”) to finance his more esoteric efforts. When his colleague Serge Grigoriev told him that such a production would soon bore him, Diaghilev — hoping that it would be the cash cow he needed — said: “Not at all. You’d run it, and I’d do something else.” Poor Diaghilev never found his cash cow. But his protégé Balanchine did. His 1954 “Nutcracker,” with the Christmas tree that grows like Jack’s beanstalk, has proved the most successful production of Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet in world history. (The original “Nutcracker,” which also had a tree that grew, opened in St. Petersburg when Diaghilev was a young man there.) Balanchine’s version also gave New York City Ballet the stability with which he was able to create his most avant-garde productions, notably “Agon” (Stravinsky, 1957) and “Episodes” (Webern, 1959).

You can love those two pieces, which remain far ahead of their time in body language and structure, and still find Balanchine’s “Nutcracker” enthralling. Every season I revisit his “Nutcracker” several times, officially to see New York City Ballet’s cast changes in the lead roles in Act II. But at every viewing the chief reward is to discover yet more detail in Act I. Over the decades thousands of dancegoers have learned to think the same; many might agree that Balanchine’s “Nutcracker” is actually more expressively diverse, more theatrically rich, than the extreme modernism of “Agon” or “Episodes” or his Stravinsky masterpieces of the 1960s and ’70s.

In a recent article in The Washington Post, Sarah Kaufman writes of the “pervading tweeness” of “The Nutcracker,” wishes that “ballet had something better to do at this time of year than endlessly reminisce like a sweet, whiskery auntie,” and argues that the work’s “stranglehold is all but squeezing ballet dry.” By contrast, she harks back to the Diaghilev days, “when ballet — ballet — lassoed the avant-garde art movement.”

The full-length ballets, Ms. Kaufman writes, are “European derived.” (Yes, but then, ballet itself is European derived, as are a great many other arts.) So “what’s American about ballet in America?” she asks. “Why not make an artistic statement with a mix of races, and use the spectrum of humanity deliberately, in a provocative way? Why not harness differences to evoke the America of today, or what we might become if only we had the imagination of an artist?”

Consider “The Hard Nut,” the version of “The Nutcracker” that Mark Morris first staged in Brussels in 1991, and that has been revived many times in America and elsewhere. The party scene is a caricature of a period and a none-too-happy white American family (with a black maid); then the stage world is magically metamorphosed into a colorful mixed-race fantasy in which ballet and barefoot dancers are equally mixed to show a view of society that is both modern-American and transcendent. You can watch it on DVD — it won the “Battle of the ‘Nutcrackers’ ” competition on Ovation TV — and in recent years it has become an annual fixture at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, Calif.

“The Hard Nut” is not a perfect work. Not all of its storytelling is clear, a few of its dances are thin, and it forces some of its narrative against the emphasis of Tchaikovsky’s score. But no American “Nutcracker” has been so internationally successful, and within America perhaps only Balanchine’s is better known. In its finest dances — the Waltz of the Snowflakes above all — that black and white dancers are side by side is merely a premise for an even larger view of humanity, with Mr. Morris’s musicality at its most theatrically exhilarating.

There’s plenty wrong with ballet today, not least with American ballet. It’s sadly true that there are ballet companies whose only annual performances are of “The Nutcracker,” and that almost every American ballet company relies on its “Nutcracker” performances as its most reliable draw. (European companies dance “The Nutcracker” too, but few of them so extensively. The Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, for example, often has “Nutcracker”-free years, and my time in London made me more used to watching Frederick Ashton’s staging of Prokofiev’s three-act “Cinderella” as Christmas fare than any “Nutcracker.”)

But let’s not castigate “The Nutcracker” just because it is the cash cow of American ballet. And let’s not make the mistake of assuming the tweeness of bad “Nutcracker” productions means that the ballet is itself twee.

Just listen to the ballet’s overture. In good productions the view of childhood that starts here, in the miniature orchestration and quick pulse of Tchaikovsky’s introduction, is enchantingly serious. Gradually the music will build in scale until you reach the colossal, slow, full-orchestral grandeur of the Sugarplum adagio in Act II: no ballet score has a greater span, and this shows how passionately Tchaikovsky was depicting the inner life of a child.

There are, by contrast, a number of full-length ballets that take up adult subject matter only to treat it frivolously. (“Le Corsaire” and “Don Quixote,” both musically cheap, are among the most traditional examples. Stanton Welch’s 2009 ballet about Marie Antoinette, “Marie,” is the most recent one I’ve seen.) Much about ballet is bad and is worth trashing; much about it is artistically tawdry and hidebound in bad tradition; and most of its current choreographers are at best poor.

“The Nutcracker,” however, is a musical masterpiece and, in some stagings, a theatrical masterpiece too. Ballet is larger, not smaller, because of it

Young peoples sex knowledge lacking

Abstinence-only sex education

CNN.com
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
December 15, 2009 12:03 a.m. EST

Gaps found in young people's sex knowledge

“Most sexually active unmarried young adults believe pregnancy should be planned, but about half do not use contraception regularly, according to a study published Tuesday.

The survey of 1,800 people age 18 to 29 was conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

"What is surprising is just how wide the gap is between single young adults' intentions and behavior on this very important issue," said Bill Albert, chief program officer at the organization.

Also, 29 percent of women and 42 percent of men said it is at least slightly likely they will have unprotected sex in the next three months -- and it's quite likely or extremely likely for 17 percent of women and 19 percent of men.

The discrepancy between both wanting to plan pregnancy and having unprotected sex may have something to do with a focus in recent years on abstinence-only education, said Laura Lindberg, senior research associate at the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute.

"Abstinence-only curriculums have gone explicitly out of their way to teach misconceptions about contraception," she said. "This generation of 20-somethings have missed many opportunities to get medically accurate and correct information."

But for abstinence education advocates, the problems stem from not enough focus on refraining from sex until marriage.

"I don't think we'll be able to overcome this problem unless we restore the social norm of not having sex and not getting pregnant before marriage," said Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council. "Even when people are informed, they just don't choose to consistently practice contraception."

Many of the people surveyed said they did not know much about contraception to begin with -- 63 percent said they knew little or nothing about birth control pills, and 30 percent said they had scant knowledge about condoms.

The numbers may reflect that while most people have heard of the pill and condoms, they have never been taught how to use the pill or where to get it, or how to put on a condom, said Dr. Yolanda Wimberly, assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the Morehouse School of Medicine and an adolescent medicine specialist with Grady Health Systems in Atlanta, Georgia.

Myths about pregnancy and sexual activity continue to permeate circles of young people. For instance, 28 percent of men incorrectly believe they will get extra protection from wearing two condoms at once, a practice that actually leads to condom breakage. At the same time, 18 percent of men wrongly believe that having sex standing up reduces the chance that they will get a female partner pregnant.

These are the kinds of myths often heard in Wimberly's office. Wimberly, who sees young people from age 12 to 30 about sexual health issues, commonly hears rumors like these that have spread among friends. Anecdotal evidence that a behavior is safe is sometimes more convincing for young adults than the recommendations of health professionals.

"If other people have been doing it, and nothing bad has happened, then they'll do it," she said. "We have definitely got to do a better job of dispelling myths."

Albert said it was shocking that about four in 10 respondents said it doesn't matter whether people use birth control, believing that people get pregnant when it's their "time."

But this was not surprising for Wimberly. She pointed out that some people are not opposed to having children in their 20s and are at a point in their lives at which they would be relatively comfortable going through with an unplanned pregnancy.

There are also exaggerated doubts and fears about birth control pills, the study said. Twenty-seven percent of women and 34 percent of men in the survey said serious health problems such as cancer are likely to result from using the pill or other hormonal contraceptives.

Experts say hormonal contraceptives are relatively safe, but there is some mixed scientific research on the topic. According to the National Cancer Institute, oral contraceptives have been shown to increase the risk of cervical cancer, although human papillomavirus is the major risk factor for the disease.

Some studies have found an increased risk of breast cancer, but others found no connection. There is also evidence that oral contraceptives decrease the risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer, but that they increase the risk of liver cancer in women who are otherwise considered at low risk for the disease.

But the known evidence does not suggest it is "highly likely" that cancer will result from the pill, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy said. The survey cites a recent Mayo Clinic study that suggested an additional 2 to 3 percent increase of developing breast cancer as a result of being on the pill.

Wimberly always goes through all the pros and cons of using the pill with her patients, including the noncontraceptive benefits. Each individual should discuss all the positives and negatives of the pill with a health care provider before deciding to use it, she said.

Nearly half the adults surveyed said they agreed that "drug companies don't care if birth control is safe; they just want people to use it so they can make money." Thirty-two percent said they agreed that "the government is trying to limit blacks and other minority populations by encouraging the use of birth control."

Still, according to a 2002 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading contraceptive method among women ages 15 to 29 is the pill.

While the actual rate of infertility among people 18 to 29 years old is 8 percent, a great deal more think they may fall into that category -- 59 percent of women and 49 percent of men said it is at least slightly likely they are infertile, and 75 percent of people who had concerns about fertility did not worry about it because of information from a doctor.

About half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The survey calls for more sex education for adults, given that about one in five participants said they had never had sex education in school. Colleges -- both two-year and four-year -- should educate students about pregnancy and contraception, and such programs should also be available in workplaces, job training sites and the military, the survey said.

Health care providers also have a role to play in ensuring that young people know all their options for family planning, and in providing patients with these methods, the report said.

Wimberly added that other community-based venues such as churches, community centers, hospitals and after-school programs could all disseminate information about contraception and family planning.

Parents can also play a big role in helping educate their children about these issues, Albert said.

Groups such as the Family Research Council continue to advocate for abstinence-only education at the K-12 level, but the organization does not have an official stance on what sex education should happen beyond that, Sprigg said.

"But as far as investing taxpayer dollars and making a strong public policy effort, we think the principle focus should be on encouraging abstinence," he said.

The survey also touches on a distrust of the health care system more generally, Lindberg said. The challenge is to "create more positive attitudes and make health care providers and the health care system feel like a safe and trusting place," she said.”

Personal comment: ‘Just say no’ doesn’t work. In today’s sex-saturated society in the U.S., I think it’s sad that there are still people who think that ‘Abstinence Only’ Sex-ed is enough to responsibly prepare teens for their roles in society. Abstinence Only sex-ed leaves teens unprepared to protect themselves against STIs and at greater risk of unintended pregnancies.