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Friday, June 17, 2005
Advertising to Teenagers
OK, I know that many people object to tobacco companies and alcoholic beverage companies advertising to teenagers. What do we think about birth control companies? The second question I would ask is: when does advertising birth control become advertising sex? OK, now that you're about to throw me off the blog, hear me out.
Has anyone seen the Ortho Tri-Cyclen-Lo commercials? The commercials depict many young women, none with wedding rings on, giggling, skipping around, and doing ballet in the forest. Fairy dust is floating around. Happy music plays. The women, who would seem teen-aged to a teen-ager, are all happy and free. Meanwhile, the narrator tells you that this new birth control pill has lower levels of estrogen and is basically "not your mother's birth control." In the 70's, this commercial would be a Stayfree Mini-pad commercial; today, it's a birth control commercial. If you look at the website, you'll notice a cartoon flower, more happy young women wearing fairy clothing, a link to win reward points, and a link to "carry your pills in style" -- order a carrying case in various colors and prints, including cheetah.
Mature women rarely do ballet in forests or buy a cheetah case for their birth control. These ads seem fairly pointed in the direction of teen-aged girls.
Now, I'm not a person going through the 21st century with blinders on. I would much prefer that my (future) teen-aged daughter be having sex using birth control if she is having sex. I don't think there is anything wrong with advertising birth control to people having sex. What I am worried about is whether a young girl who is contemplating becoming sexually active would use this ad to determine whether it is a good idea. (I'm sure that all teen-agers use perfect logic when making these types of decisions, but bear with me.) When I was growing up, images around me didn't depict a lot of teen-age sexuality besides movies-of-the-week that always ended in tragedy or movies of the Porky's variety. In these ads, though, the girls are pretty, skinny, good ballet dancers, and seemingly full of self-esteem.
I may have gone off the deep end here, but I wondered if anyone else had noticed (the ad, not my plunge).
Posted by Christine Hurt on June 17, 2005 at 12:11 AM in Deliberation and voices | Permalink
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Comments
This is the same argument conservatives in Congress use to teach abstinence to high school kids instead of teaching them about condoms. And scientific studies have shown that if you don't teach kids about condoms, they will still have sex, just not safe sex. I bet it's the same with birth control pills. Teenagers are going to have sex no matter what, and there is no problem with that. (And by no problem, I'm not saying teens should just jump into bed together, but we should be realistic and not in denial) Let's teach them to have safe sex, reduce teen pregnancies and reduce STD's.
Posted by: Phil | Jun 17, 2005 8:08:02 AM
Would a girl use this ad to decide if sex was a good idea? I'd imagine there are many, many factors which go into such a decision, and to the extent that this ad is one of them, it would be a very small factor, IMO. It would be nice if the ad convinced a girl who has previously considered having sex to buy birth control before she actually becomes sexually active. Then when the time comes she'll be protected. So I think the ads could be great.
Posted by: MV | Jun 17, 2005 8:41:37 AM
Phil, I agree with you. I'm a realist, and I understand that just teaching abstinence is unrealistic. However, birth control pills do not offer safe sex, only a 99.99% chance of avoiding pregnancy. I would rather that sex ed be taught with a more realistic view than the "My Little Pony" advertising by a drug company trying to sell prescriptions the same way we sell shampoo or lipstick or other products. MV, I wish I could tell you that I did not look at random images to make big decisions when I was in high school, but I know that I did. If John Cougar and his wife had looked younger, more attractive, and happier about their teen-age sexuality in the Jack & Diane video, my life could have been completely different.
Posted by: Christine | Jun 17, 2005 9:34:05 AM
Are teenage girls really that stupid? "The girl in the Pill commercial looked happy, so sure hun, lets do it?"
Posted by: Paul Gowder | Jun 17, 2005 9:49:03 AM
Most girls will use condoms over pills and will be lectured by their doctor about STD's when they go to get examined before being perscribed birth control. I would hope they would be smart enough to not put themselves at risk for STD's. Also, all pill commercials say (IIRC) that they do not prevent the transmission of STD's. STD's are a bigger problem than teen pregnancy, but we should try to fight both, and not say, well, we can't talk about teenagers and birth control pills until they have all mastered that they need to use condoms.
Posted by: Phil | Jun 17, 2005 10:08:29 AM
For what it's worth:
Maternal correlates of adolescent sexual and contraceptive behaviorAnd from later in the same study:Family Planning Perspectives, Jul/Aug 1996, by Jaccard, James, Dittus, Patricia J., Gordon, Vivian V.
Maternal disapproval of premarital sex, maternal discussions about birth control and the quality of the parent-child relationship may have an important influence on adolescents' sexual activity and the consistency of their contraceptive use. Findings from a survey of 751 black youths showed that adolescent perceptions of maternal disapproval of premarital sex and satisfaction with the mother-child relationship were significantly related to abstinence from adolescent sexual activity and to less-frequent sexual intercourse and more consistent use of contraceptives among sexually active youths. Teenagers who reported a low level of satisfaction with their mother were more than twice as likely as those highly satisfied with their relationship to be having sexual intercourse. Discussions about birth control were associated with an increased likelihood that adolescents were sexually active.
The odds of engaging in sexual intercourse when the predictors were set to low risk were 0.46 to 1, but when they were set to high risk, the odds were 5.75 to 1. Thus, when relationship satisfaction was high, when the mother was seen as being opposed to premarital sex, and when discussions of birth control were minimal, it was 12.5 times more likely that the adolescent would not engage in sexual intercourse than when relationship satisfaction was low, the mother was seen as more equivocal in her opposition to premarital sex, and the mother had talked to a greater extent about birth control.
Posted by: Stuart Buck | Jun 17, 2005 10:41:00 AM
I don't have a tv so haven't seen the comercial. But, my only worry about teens being on the pill is that it seems likely to make them less likely to use condoms. I don't know if that's true, but it seems likely to me, even with the warnings, becuase I'm sure pregnancy is more in most teens mind than STD's are. But, I'd tend to think that things that encourage teens to have a positive and happy attitude about sex are great, and that making them think it's such a big deal is half the problem. So, so long as this sort of thing doesn't lead to come condomless sex (as I fear it would) I think it's terrific.
Posted by: Matt | Jun 17, 2005 10:41:14 AM
Marketing without using intimidating clinical imagery and boring graphics may be a calculated appeal toward younger women, not just teens. This is probably especially true of Ortho-TriCyclen, which has previously made vanity appeals to consumers by vaunting its ability to reduce skin problems. Most women just take whatever pills their doctor prescribes, but if these ads make young women think this is a particular pill that's right for their generation/needs, they may ask for it by name, and doctors may comply.
You may think the acne angle is itself a veiled appeal to teens, but if we can get parents to put their daughters on the Pill for dermatological reasons, that means there won't be a lag between the time they become sexually active and the time they get BCPs.
P.S. What's wrong with mature women carrying cheetah print pill cases? Are we supposed to become stodgy as soon as we hit twenty? I'm twenty-four, and mine live in a case with a Turkish "evil eye" pattern (since averting bad luck is what the Pill is all about).
Posted by: Pill Customer | Jun 17, 2005 10:48:12 AM
I'm with you, Christine. Serious things need serious, thoughtful advertising. People should use birth control out of an understanding of how it works, why it is important, what its limits are. And after a through discussion with a parent about the benefits and drawbacks of having sex. There are consequences to becoming sexually active, and they don't go away just because you have a cute advertising campaign.
People should _not_ be using birth control because it's cool, or because all their friends are doing it, or because they think it makes them sexy like the girls in the commercial.
You can't sell a credit card or a mutual fund without a whole lot of serious discussion and disclosure. Birth control should be no different.
Posted by: Kaimi | Jun 17, 2005 11:02:12 AM
Stuart- Maybe you don't mean to say otherwise, but doesn't it seem likely that the order of causation in the example you cite runs from being sexual active (or soon planning to be) to having discussions of birthcontrol, not the other way around? And doesn't that seem like a good thing? And while some folks obviously believe that it's bad for teens to be sexual active, I hope they are willing to admit that this is at least partly based on reasons that they can't reasonably expect everyone to share. I'm not crazy about marketing drugs in general, but I see nothing worse here, perhaps much less bad here, than the marketing of anti-depressants or blood pressure medicine. If the idea of the young and not married having sex and feeling good about it makes you uncomfortable, that's fine, but it's also your problem, and not something that you can reasonably expect others who don't (reasonably) share your particular religious commitments to share. (And let's be honest- it is your religious commitments that are pushing things here, at least in the case of Kaimi and Stuart. I don't know enough about Christine to say, but it does sound like it. That's fine, of course, but you should not be surprised or dismayed when others don't share them.)
Posted by: Matt | Jun 17, 2005 12:30:33 PM
I'm so glad that Stuart has let me know that if my daughter has sex for the wrong reasons, it's all my fault! Of course, I would have thought that anyway.
Actually, my personal concerns about teen-age sexuality tower my religious beliefs here, although I am grateful that I have the power of religion behind me when speaking to my children! I think a lot of young girls have unmarried sex for all the wrong reasons and at times too early for them to sort out their feelings. I've never heard anyone regret starting sexual activity too late, but I've stayed up late with a lot of girls who regretted a lot of things. I would just hope that this commercial doesn't give young girls the idea that sexual relations at any age and with any person are self-affirming, invigorating experiences.
And yes, I do think that young girls look to the images around them to make decisions, whether it's to buy $200 jeans, to be friends with certain people, to play the flute instead of the tuba, to apply to a college whose basketball team was in the Final Four, etc. This is the same demographic that we argue will start smoking if an ad has a cartoon on it.
Posted by: Christine | Jun 17, 2005 5:22:47 PM
Matt --
Maybe you don't mean to say otherwise, but doesn't it seem likely that the order of causation in the example you cite runs from being sexual active (or soon planning to be) to having discussions of birthcontrol, not the other way around?
Sure, that is eminently possible. Maybe even likely. But it also seems common sense to me that the causation could work the other way too. Imagine an analogy: A parent says, "Son, I don't want you speeding. Speeding can be dangerous in the wrong circumstances, especially for teens who are inexperienced at driving. I'll admit that we adults sometimes can make the informed judgment that the road conditions are ideal, traffic is sparse, etc., and decide to speed. But you're not old enough to make that judgment reliably. So just try to stay under the speed limit. I mean it.
"But by the way, if you do speed, you'll be better off if you can avoid the consequences (i.e., getting caught by the police). So I'm buying a radar detector and installing it in your car. So whenever you speed, just be sure to flip the detector on."
Granted, the analogy isn't perfect in a number of ways. But is it really so hard to imagine that at least some teenagers would see this as a mixed message, or even as a sort of "wink, nudge" permission to speed? And that a few of them might speed more often as a result?
Posted by: Stuart Buck | Jun 18, 2005 11:39:56 AM
Stuart: that analogy is extremely not perfect. For one thing, contraception protects the child from actual harm. A radar detector protects the child from beneficial and instructive punishment.
Instead of a radar detector, try seatbelts or airbags. Suppose the parents don't want their child driving at all. Would it behoove them to remove the seatbelts and airbags from the family car when they're not using it?
Posted by: Paul Gowder | Jun 18, 2005 8:05:51 PM
Paul:
Yes, it is more legitimate to want to avoid STDs than it is to avoid the speeding laws. But I think that is irrelevant. The point is that there is a mixed message. (If you think the consequences are differently situated, that simply means that you might not care that the message is mixed in the first place. But it would still be a mixed message.)
Posted by: Stuart Buck | Jun 19, 2005 10:45:26 AM
Stuart: we send mixed messages all the time when we try and make it safer for people to do things that we don't necessarily want them doing at all but know they're going to do. It's called having a humane and merciful society.
The seatbelts and airbags example shows that your "we shouldn't make it safer for people to do things that we don't want them doing because it creates a mixed message" theory would leave us in a terribly cruel world, and one that I suspect you'd be as reluctant to live in as I. For example, tort law would have absolute contributory negligence at all time, because we don't want to send a mixed message by allowing people to avoid the consequences of even their slight negligence. Is this good?
Posted by: Paul Gowder | Jun 19, 2005 1:09:00 PM
If I point out that something is a mixed message, does that mean that I oppose it? No. Did I say anything that stands for the generic proposition that no one should ever make a harmful activity safer? No.
Imagine with me here. Imagine that in World A, parents tell their teenagers, "No sex, period." And imagine that in World A, 30 percent of 15-year-olds have sex, and out of that 30 percent, 50 percent use protection of some sort. Now imagine that in World B, parents tell their kids, "No sex, but hey, you're going to do it anyway, so here's some protection." Imagine that in World B, 60 percent of the 15-year-olds have sex and all of them use protection.
So you still might prefer World B. More kids are having sex, but more of them are using protection. Maybe overall that's a better situation. But that doesn't change the fact that, at least in my hypo, twice as many kids are having sex in the first place.
So if the question is about the latter point -- about what causes more kids to have sex in the first place -- that sort of story could be true. That's all I'm saying, because someone asked a question about causation.
Posted by: Stuart Buck | Jun 19, 2005 1:34:57 PM
Forgive me for assuming a moral judgment into a comparison to deliberate evasion of the police using the phrase "wink, nudge."
Posted by: Paul Gowder | Jun 19, 2005 10:43:22 PM
Hello,
I only read 2 comments here, and the main blog. I think that the comments that I did read... those people writing them are not at all thinking that a teen ager isn't necessarily going to have sex just because it is presented to them and available for them to do. I have 3 teen aged daughters, and they all have been taught the importance of abstinence. They protest that sex is not for them and not right for their friends. They have lost friends because they have refused to just go with the flow in many instances. Just because something is there, does not mean that someone is going to take advantage of it. Birth control pills do not protect from STD's or AIDS, so please do not say that if the girl wants to or choses to have sex, at least she'll be protected if she takes the pill. I got 2 STD's while on the pill. I also got pregnant while on the pill. Pills, condoms, sponges, IUD's and the like do not protect 100%. Yes, this is the 21st century, and things are different now than when our grandparents grew up. But were their moral beliefs so terrible that they should not be considered when teaching our own youth?
Just something for you all to think about.
Thanx
Posted by: Jameelah | Jan 22, 2007 5:35:38 PM
the thing about this commercial, is that its not even teens that are depicted, the 'actors' are most likely older then 18, so 'teen sex' is not really the issue, the other (and better in my opinion) commercial for Tri-cyclen-lo does depict 'teen girls' who may or may not be thinking of having sex, but in no way does the commercial say anthing like "HEY GO HAVE SEX AS SOON AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN" and it is in fact a very mature commercial in my opinion. Teens are GOING to have sex (i sohuld know, i am one myself and im on the pill, and im having sex) so why not promote safe sex practices?
P.S: I live in canada, toronto to be exact, so i'm not even sure if this commercial is shown in america or anywhere else... but bascially it shows different girls doing things that have to do with the voice over, and the voice over says things like, 'try being nice, try being bad, try being good, try doing something different, etc....
Posted by: teeny | Apr 11, 2007 6:50:28 PM
i totally agree with you.
i am student of media management and i am searching to find a way to advertise safe sex in my country for teenagers (both gender)
but yet i couldnot.very very difficult
Posted by: mehri | Nov 19, 2008 4:13:40 AM
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