"My orgasm defies you."
That's what Christina Garcia De los Rios, a UF English junior and committee member of Pride Awareness Month, wrote on the back of her Paint Your Orgasm T-shirt last year. On the front, she painted her orgasm depicted as an explosion of bright colors. The Pride Student Union at UF sponsored the Paint Your Orgasm day for the Ninth Annual Pride Awareness Month, De los Rios said.
Pride Awareness Month aims to spread acceptance of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
Members of Pride Student Union and other volunteers set up near the Reitz Union Wednesday with paint, paint brushes and white T-shirts so passing students and faculty could show how they think their orgasms would look.
The annual event is aimed to spread sexuality awareness and create an environment where it's OK to talk about sex, said Pride Student Union member and UF sociology and Spanish senior Davier Rodriguez.
Not everyone is open to the idea of these walking, visible orgasms, though.
Rodriguez said a preacher had to be removed from the area one year for protesting the event.
Lorraine Wheat, one of the event directors, said most people are very receptive to it. In the past, she said there have been about 200 students who have stopped by to paint a T-shirt.
Gabrielle Robinson, a UF freshman and one of the first participants, said she had been planning on coming to the event since she heard about it at the Pride Student Union comedy show on Monday.
For the first time, there was an evening follow-up event in the Reitz Union, Rodriguez said.
The purpose of the follow-up, he said, was for everyone to wear the shirts they painted earlier and to share stories and poetry during the open-mic period. The event also featured a talk about safe sex by Teresa White of the Alachua County Health Department, also known as Condom Miranda.
