Friday, March 22, 2013

So much for my Happy Ending...

And here we have a truly epic government-funded PSA from Singapore, targeting the YOLO generation, because we apparently aren't concerned enough about our future fertility.

One of the ads features Alice, a 'wild and reckless' girl in a YOLO crop top inexplicably steering a convertible from the passenger's seat while holding balloons, with a pop-up warning that 'extended adolescence for twenty-somethings today has a biological cost for women.'


Quick, y'all, get breeding! Else our extended adolescence will have a biological cost!

Their use of metaphor is liberal, with eggs/fertility depicted as balloons, golden goose eggs, etc. I do worry that this campaign is not sufficiently patronising for its target audience, despite the heavy use of cartoon imagery, bright colours, and nursery rhyme references. Perhaps they could dumb it down a little more, for those of us that didn't quite grasp it?

Just to be clear, one's fairytale ending must involve breeding, else you simply don't qualify for Happy Ever After. The Snow White ad features the downright disturbing text, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall / Who in this land is the richest of all? / Snow White, beyond the mountains, with her seven children / Who learn, play, and give her kisses every day / Snow White is the richest of all."

If popping out seven children is Happy Ever After, I think I'll pass.

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