Its things like this that can put me right over the edge on an otherwise quiet Friday night. I confess, I was bewitched by this video: the story is touching, the little girl is adorable beyond words, and they appear to be a happy and beautiful family. I'm haunted by the part where one of the men mentions the tension during the period when Raphaelle could, "go back in her biological family." The message is pretty clear here: adoption is a socially acceptable way to build families for people who otherwise wouldn't be able to have children of their own. Furthermore, the ad implies that this little girl is much better off with this set of parents than her original family.
[Standard adoptee disclaimers apply here: I do not hate my adoptive parents. I do not hate adoptive families. I strongly support gay parenthood. I am not angry. I don't have a miserable life. Etc.etc.etc.]
However, I beg marketers with all of the civility that I'm capable of: please stop using adoption stories to sell products.
This isn't the first instance of hawking a happy adoption story to sell consumers some new stuff along with their shiny new babies. Remember the awful Kay Jewelers ad? The majority of the outrage about the Kay Jewelers ad came from adoptive parents angry that the ad glossed over their painful realities [and possibly brought home the reality that adoption is a financial as much as an emotional transaction?]. The ad angered adoptees as well, who astutely noted that the ad never so much as mentions the actual adoptee [who, as the standard narrative dictates, never has a voice]. The ad also failed to say anything about the baby's biological family, presumably because biological families are so eager and happy to dump inconvenient children into the arms of total strangers and then run. Badvertising, all the way around that pissed off adoptive parents, adoptees, and first parents in less than thirty seconds. Way to go, Kay Jewelers!
Perhaps learning from the Kay Jewelers uproar, this ad takes a different tact--we're touched by the love story between the two men and their love for their adopted daughter is palpable. Its a more tolerable ad because of its approach. We're pulled along by the tangible emotion here. Nevertheless, its still using happy adoption stories to sell products.
Adoptees are people with individual stories. Some of them are blessed with happy stories. Some of them have sad stories. In the diverse [and often divided] community of adoptees can't speak for anyone but myself, but I resent having adoption stories used in this way. It looks to me like just another happy story that covers a whole host of things about adoption that we'd rather not think about: race, class, financial transactions, broken families, the infamous adoptee issues, shame, guilt, lies, and secrets. And that's just for starters.
It is quite socially unacceptable these days to criticize gay adoption, but its important to think about whose interests are being served and for what purpose. I've seen a lot of angry stuff coming out of the adoption community in the past few years about the rights of gay parents to adopt, to the point where one might be tempted to think that the rights of gay parents and adoptees are incompatible. It is frustrating as an adopted person to watch the civil rights struggles of some groups of people surpass those of the children whose best interests are supposed to be at the center of adoption. Its heartbreaking to watch a new wave of adoptive parents insist on their names on the amended birth certificate instead of insisting on legislative changes that would preserve the information on the original birth certificate of adoptees.
But this post isn't about gay parenting. This is about using adoption stories as marketing ploys to sell products. In our adoption-centric world, this is probably a marketing strategy that will succeed. Nevertheless, by over-dramatizing the happy parts of adoption in order to sell Cheerios, it continues to trivialize the voices of adoptees and their very real pain and struggles. We're people, not marketing tools. Our stories are ours.
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