Teen Charlotte Sedaka chatted with Digital Journal’s Markos Papadatos about co-founding the condom company “Condom with a Conversation” with Luca Wheeler and Jed Siegel.
“Luca, Jed, and I all went to the same schools together and we went through sex education together and that was all during the height of the #MeToo movement,” she said. “We learned about contraceptives, how not to get pregnant and how to avoid STIs. That was really the extent of all of our sex education classes meanwhile we would leave school and see all of the things in the news about #MeToo and consent and we didn’t know what it meant since we weren’t taught about it in school.”
“Once we finished with our sex education, we went on to educate ourselves more about consent and the #MeToo movement. We decided to come up with a product to educate other people about consent since it wasn’t being taught in school. We came up with a product that would help promote safe sex and it would simultaneously teach people about consent in a post #MeToo movement world,” she said.
Sedaka is a teen that just graduated from Viewpoint School in Calabasas, California. She has a twin sister and a younger brother. She has a passion for filmmaking, especially producing and she is was a flyer on the varsity cheerleading team at her school.
She is still a Teenline listener and a Change the Talk Peer Educator. “I am still working for Teenline, where I speak to children ages nine to 19. It’s about anything regarding their mental health,” she said. “I plan to continue with Teenline for as long as I can.”
“Condom with a Conversation” is a distinct condom company that was created by three teens looking to demystify sexual consent and cultivate open and honest conversations about sex. Beyond the age of its co-founders, what sets it apart from its competitors is its message.
They are also filming a documentary about consent, where they worked with director Alina Foley. “That is going well. We completed our PSA documentary, which is on our website,” she said. “We interviewed over 50 people over the ages of 15 to 90 about their experience with consent, what they knew and what they didn’t.”
On the title of the current chapter of her life, Sedaka said, “The Beautifully Unexpected.”
Sedaka defined the word success as “helping others and creating something in a new facet that can help others.”
She concluded about “Condom with a Conversation,” “Consent is not a taboo topic and it’s one that is important to talk about in an open dialogue. It doesn’t end with a ‘yes,’ it’s a continuous conversation that needs to go on beyond one time.”
To learn more about “Condom with a Conversation,” check out its official website and Instagram page.
