"I Am African" Ad is Strange

ad in Vanity Fair, September 06 issue/keepachildalive.org

I thought this was a spoof when I first saw it. Though my first reaction was 'whoa, that is a strange and stupid ad," I've had to pause to really think about what keepachildalive.org is trying to do and say to its audience in this month's Vanity Fair. To be fair, the first question when looking at this ad for the non-profit Keep A Child Alive org, featuring Gwyneth Paltrow under the words, "I am African," should be; who reads, Vanity Fair? As its title, suggests its readership is for the leisurely (and white). Searching around, I found this copyranter blogger, a former copywriter who now hates anything to do with new york advertising. He's (what else?) ranting about the "I am African" ad.

Copyranter's blog says, "You are the whitest white girl in the entire wide white world, Paltrow. Cheers to you that you support a very worthy cause. BUT, allow someone else to do the ads.... you just look completely and utterly ridiculous."

Okay, fair enough, she does look somwhat ridiculous, with that "African" beaded necklace and smudge of tribal colour across her cheek. But maybe that's the point. Though with Brad and Angelina taking "Africa" into People magazine this year, it's hard not to feel somewhat suspicous of the coolness quotient of associating your name to 'being African.' Then again, if protest is cool, and if aligning yourself with continents that have so far been ignored in mainstream media is cool, then I'm all for it. Only this 'whole racism thing' makes it quite complicated, no? How easy is it for a white American 'apple-pie' (with a daughter named Apple and a son named Moses and a rock-star husband) woman to say, "I am African?" If the creators of the ad think Vanity Fair readers will pay less attention to the images of black Africans, but will stop for Gwyneth or David Bowie, doesn't the ad say more about the readers than its creators?