“Closer Together”: Durex Condoms and Contraceptive Consumerism in 1970s Britain

Abstract

Durex’s “Closer Encounters” campaign, displayed on billboards across Britain in 1979, marked a significant moment of transition for the Durex brand. Not only was it one of the company’s highest visibility campaigns to date, but it was also one of its first to so completely foreground a message about the pleasures and sensations that condoms enabled rather than the unplanned pregnancies they helped prevent. What facilitated this transition? This chapter argues that, in terms of both the campaign’s scale and visibility, and the particular claims about condoms and their sexual function it expressed, “Closer Encounters” signalled the culmination of two interlinked processes, the analysis of which provides insights into how heterosexual relationships, the gendered division of contraceptive responsibilities, and meanings of “good” sex have been reconceived in post-war Britain.

I would like to thank Bernhard Rieger and Jess Borge for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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