This poster is part of a series of three that illustrate two common shifts in the themes of HIV/AIDS posters in the late 1980s and early 1990s: (1) targeting specific racial or ethnic communities by using different photographic subjects to personalize the disease; and (2) juxtaposing text and image to dispel myths about at-risk populations. The three children with similarly uneasy expressions could easily be advertising cough medicine or breakfast cereal. The viewer would likely be surprised to learn from the text that this is a public service ad for HIV/AIDS education. By using the images of attentive children, the posters challenge parents to overcome existing taboos, suggesting they have a responsibility to educate their children about HIV/AIDS. The message also normalizes the controversial advice offered by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in his report on HIV/AIDS issued in 1986, which suggested that since education was the best and only strategy of prevention, and since HIV/AIDS was spread primarily through sex, school children should receive sex education. In this context, the expectant faces on the children alongside the imploring passage suggest that parents have a moral duty to educate their children.. NOTE: Slide of original poster image is blurry.
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