Sex in my Obama Panties and World Aids Day Project

I'm bringing together two important events -- Obama's presidential victory and World Aids Day-- to form a project: My Obama Panties and World Aids Day Project.


The site of this convergence will be my bum, where I am currently wearing a pair of Obama panties, and where my fight against HIV/AIDS starts.

Earlier this year, I got a pair of Obama panties -- underwear with Obama's face on it. I didn't wear them until today. It's a long story, but last night at a dance club in Delhi, I ripped my favorite jeans, my only jeans in Delhi, and today, I wanted to defy the destruction of my pants by wearing terribly proud underwear. So I grabbed the Obama panties.

Then the idea dawned on me. What if I wore my Obama underwear everyday, of course, washing them every night? Obama could be an intimate reminder to bring excellence to every part of my life, especially my reproductive parts, and also the men I choose to date.

This logic really got me brainstorming some action around World Aids Day, which pushes the global movement to stop HIV/AIDS every Dec. 1.

I find my best activism begins with my body and my life.

So in honor of World Aids Day – and its 20th anniversary--I am going to don the Obama panties – Every Day – to personalize my pursuit of a better world that Obama personifies. Only a man like Obama is worth even seeing my Obama panties.

Black women especially need an Obama Panties & World Aids Day project.

Today, black women form the cover-girl image of the Hiv/Aids epidemic in America. Black women are more than half of all new cases of Hiv – still more than 40,000 a year. And I'm writing this from India, where so many women, like in America, contract the virus from their main partner.

Many experts point to a lack of sex education in black schools and towns as a main cause.

But let's be real: Black women still struggle against the distortion of their worth in pop culture and in the world. Starved for positive reflections of our worth, we may be prone to finding security in haphazard relations instead of the independence, and self-study required to turn this epidemic around.

So I hope my project will encourage a conversation about personal responsibility.

Unlike many women in Africa, South America, and Asia, black American women have an incredible degree of choice in our sexual matters and education.

How long are we going to expect free, government-issued condoms to protect our crisis of self-esteem that undergirds poor sexual choices?