Shot
A while back we posted about the Montana Meth Project, a particularly powerful PSA series on the perils of crank (spoiler: it's very perilous).
We were similarly rattled by this borderline-NSFW MTV spot.
The fact that heterosexual women under 30 are the fastest growing group of people infected by HIV says nothing about how big that group is relative to all new HIV cases. We have a few follow-up questions on that point. But the basic idea—that unsafe sex can end lives—that we read loud and clear.
Posted on April 15, 2008 by - andrewprice
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this lurid commerical is misleading
My first thought was, why are there never overweight people having sex on TV or in commercials. Obesity/Diabetes is a far, far greater threat to women under 30 than HIV is. An Hispanic woman born today has a 50% lifetime risk of developing diabetes...a car with two fat people going at it would probably scare me from eating ever again.
This commercial might make a very strong point about condom use, but it does so by providing an image of post-coital M-on-F violence that is unacceptable no matter how well it "represents" a woman's risk of contracting HIV.
Plus, this ad is embracing an outdated metaphor for HIV, the 1985 notion that HIV/AIDS is an immediate death sentence. With today's standard of care, AIDS is not a death sentence like owning a handgun is.
Lastly, the emphasis on the increasing incidence of HIV in heterosexual women is alarmist. There were 7,000 new cases of HIV in heterosexual women in the US in 2006, 16,000 new cases of HIV in men who have sex with men.
Condoms are important, but we don't have to resort to harshly shocking comics to promote them. Trojan ads with men as pigs in a bar are a much more reasonable approach. Let's save the big guns for another date.
Posted on April 16, 2008 — by jtg2001
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