August 23, 2010
I was struck by an article in The Guardian last week about lost wallets.
The article reported on a recent study in which a company “dropped” 20 wallets containing £10 in cash, a photograph, tickets, receipts, stamps and several business cards in shopping centers, on public transport, in museums, cafes, and on the street in five British cities: London, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff and Glasgow. Only two in ten of the wallets were returned to their owners and only around half of those (55%) contained the original sum of money.
The study caught my eye because I was recently one of those lucky 20%. I didn’t exactly lose my wallet, but I did lose an envelope containing 15 pounds (roughly twenty-three dollars). And here’s the kicker: the envelope didn’t have my name and address on it.
All it had was a hand-scribbled note that I’d written to a woman – we’ll call her Kelly – from whom I was buying a (British) Dustbuster before she moved back to America the next day. The note read something along the lines of “To Kelly from Delia. Thanks and Good luck!,” with the cash stuffed inside.
While walking to her house to pick up the Dustbuster, I’d apparently dropped the envelope on the ground along a busy London street. Because I couldn’t find the envelope when I got to her house, I assumed that I’d lost it for good and went to a bank machine to get some cash. But the next day, a stranger contacted me (and Kelly) by email to say that she’d found the envelope and because she knew that Kelly was moving (and vaguely knew that Kelly knew someone called Delia) she figured that it was us.
Can you believe it? I mean, what are the chances that this woman would a. see the envelope on that particular street, which is quite commercial and heavily trafficked b. bother to read my chicken-scratch and c. return it on a hunch? Bear in mind that I’d never met her before and barely knew Kelly either.
She is obviously a very nice person. To whom I am most grateful. (If you’re into this sort of thing you must listen to the This American Life episode entitled The Kindness of Strangers.)
I love this story because it illustrates the humanity in all of us. (OK, in 2/5 of us.) But it’s also a great small-world story. Sometimes I really do believe the whole Six Degrees of Separation thing (even if I’m not connected to Kevin Bacon. Sniff.) A friend of mine just posted on Face Book that her son is about to go off to college and it turns out he’ll be living right down the hall from his best friend in Kindergarten (whom he hasn’t seen in 13 years.) Again, what are the odds?
OK, so now it’s your turn to dish. What’s your best kindness of strangers and/or small world story?
C’mon folks. It’s a light news week. Let er’ rip…
Image: Castanza Wallet by rbieber via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
22 Comments | 
Lifestyle, Relationships, Trends/Studies/Research | Tagged: do people actually return lost wallets, finding a wallet, Kevin Bacon, kindness of strangers, returning a lost wallet, six degrees of separation, small world stories, This American Life | 
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Posted by delialloyd
August 18, 2010
Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.
A few weeks ago, I posted a link to a quiz on the BBC website called Sex ID that purported to let you know whether you think like a man or a woman. (Warning to those who have yet to take it: the quiz lasts about 20 minutes.)
If you managed to make it through this quiz, you’ll know that a lot of the tasks that they have you do boil down to whether you’re good at reading maps and judging the angle of parallel lines (more typically male traits) vs. whether you can read people’s expressions and identify with them (more typically female traits.)
I’ve since been informed via The Guardian that a new study is out showing that behavioral differences between the sexes are not, in fact the result of fundamentally different wiring in the brain, but rather the result of societal expectations.
Be that as it may (and I’m sure that this is one of those debates that will rage into eternity and beyond), I’ve been giving the whole male vs. female thing some more thought since taking that quiz, where I scored (huge sigh of relief?) as a prototypical-thinking woman. Here are some further indicators I’ve come up with that shed light on whether or not you think like a man:
1. You like reading instruction manuals. While I’m quite sympathetic to Gretchen Rubin’s admonition over on The Happiness Project to read the instruction manual, there is a distinction between doing something because you *ought* to do it and doing something because you enjoy it. I hereby submit that I absolutely hate reading instruction manuals and – as a result – have spent many a frustrated moment by either failing to consult them ex ante or failing to save them somewhere useful ex post. My husband, in contrast, has an entire file full of instruction manuals for virtually every single appliance in our house. Not only does he consult them regularly, he actually seems to enjoys it! And instruction manuals in video form are even better, as with this video on how to take apart and re-assemble my new Brompton folding bicycle. Hey, it’s your funeral, as they say…
b. You like to talk about gadgets. I’ve posted many times on this blog about my husband’s penchant for gadgetry. I don’t think that’s an inherently male trait – many of the things he’s bought for us have been hugely useful and I like them as much as he does. But there’s using them and then there’s talking about using them. And I’ve noticed lately that guys like to spend an inordinate amount of time cataloging, describing and comparing gadgets in a way that women don’t.
c. You read David Pogue’s column in the NYT religiously. Which brings us to a corollary of (b) – David Pogue’s technology column in the New York Times, Pogue’s Posts. Don’t get me wrong. If I’m in the market for a new cell phone or a digital camera, I turn to Pogue first. The guy is unbelievably knowledgable about technology and a terrific writer to boot. But as generic reading material on the order of “Here’s how I’m going to spend my breakfast?” Not so much. Whereas my husband is glued for hours.
d. You like playing strategy games. This may have actually been one of the questions on the BBC quiz; I can no longer remember. But since taking that quiz, my son and I happened to open up Othello, a game that one of his friends gave him for his birthday last year. It’s one of those deceptively simple games that actually requires an enormous amount of strategy on the part of the players. If you’re like me, you take the easy route on this game, maximize your winnings as you go, and ultimately lose. If you’re like my son or my husband, you look like you’re losing all the way along but at the very last minute you win because you’ve been thinking like 6 moves ahead the whole time. (Ditto Settlers of Catan, the greatest game of all time.)
e. You (still) like assembling Legos. Someone recently gave my husband one of those adult Lego kits. It was a model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Falling Water home (see above), a painting of which is hung in our living room. I think Legos are really cool, especially this new architectural series. But, much like gadgetry, it’s something I’d rather admire than actually build. So if this had been given to me as a present, it probably would have languished somewhere in a closet, taking up space on my never-ending “should” list. Whereas my husband spent weeks with the kids building this house, which now adorns the mantle in our living room right in front of our picture. (He’s in good company, btw. Apparently, to kill time during a recent trip abroad, English football legend David Beckham confessed that he spent a night in a hotel constructing The Taj Majal.)
As I read this over, I realize that it may provide more of an insight into my marriage than it does into generic male/female brain differences. Then again, I do think that having a division of labor is key to a happy marriage, so maybe that’s a good thing!
Image: falling water lego side by happy via flickr under a Creative Commons license
9 Comments | Consumerism, Gadgets, Relationships, Tips List | Tagged: Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project, settlers of catan, David Pogue, do men and women think differently, Sex ID quiz, BBC sex ID quiz, gender roles and socialization, behavioral differences between the sexes, reading instruction manuals, liking instruction manuals, how to take apart a Brompton bicycle, talking about gadgets, David Pogue's technology colun, Pogue's Posts, strategy games, Othello, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water Lego, Lego architecture series, David Beckham and lego, lego for grown ups, division of labor within a marriage | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
August 17, 2010
OK, so at long last I’m going to go ahead and open up my Facebook account to…(drumroll please)…you!
I’ve held off doing this for a long time. When I first joined Facebook a little over a year ago (yes, I know, I was a late adopter…), I wasn’t quite sure how it would fit into my life and wanted to keep it just for close “real life” friends and family.
Well, as any of you fellow Facebook-o-philes realize, that model quickly went right out the window. Although I wouldn’t “accept” anyone as a friend that I’d never met personally, the range of people who made it under the radar because we’d once met was still quite high. One year later and with 325 friends (and growing), it now seems silly to call all of those people close friends.
In addition, I blog regularly at places like Politics Daily and The Huffington Post and Yahoo! Shine where it’s pretty much du rigueur to invite readers to not only follow you on twitter (which I’ve always done), but to friend you on Facebook. It’s all part of the new journalism, dontcha know, and I need to get with that program.
Until recently, another barrier to going global with my Facebook account was that I decided – erroneously, I now believe – to use my given name, Delia Boylan, for Facebook and my professional name, Delia Lloyd, for everything else. But that just proved confusing. I’ve recently solved that problem by changing my Facebook name to Delia Boylan Lloyd so that there’s something for everyone (including my own multiple personalities…).
But probably the most important reason that I’ve changed my Facebook policy is that there’s absolutely nothing I post there that I wouldn’t be 100% comfortable with other people seeing. Which doesn’t mean that my status updates anodyne or dull. It’s simply that I gradually realized that there’s no rational reason that people who don’t know me – but might want to Know me (in a non-biblical sense, heh-heh) – shouldn’t.
Plus, I’m an inherently extroverted person and I enjoy reading status updates from people I don’t know as much as from those I do. They’re witty, informative and (among other things) often give me writing ideas. And since we now know that social networking isn’t destroying the whole fabric of friendship, just evolving what the concept means, I say, bring it on.
Since I’m opening up my virtual floodgates, let me briefly explain how I use these two wonders of social media. Facebook I use mostly in a very personal sense, by which I mean that I post short, often humorous snippets about my day to day life – e.g. something funny my kids said, a great book I’m reading, a film I’ve seen. It’s a sort of “behind the scenes” RealDelia.
Twitter, in contrast, I tend use in a more professional sense. I share neat articles, interviews and videos I come across, or other cool stuff on the web. It’s very much a sort of daily version of my Friday Pix series, except that I update it throughout the day.
So join me, friends, on Facebook. Here’s a link to my profile, which is also on the “About page” of this blog. (Note: I will ask you how you got to me, just to weed out the crazies.) And if you’d like to follow me, I’ve included a handy-dandy blue bird in my side bar that will take you directly to my twitter feed.
Finally, if you’re one of those people who doesn’t know what any of this is and couldn’t be bothered to find out, I say: do so in good health.
Image: Facebook by Laughing Squid via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.
6 Comments | Blogging, Relationships | Tagged: realdelia, politics daily, Delia Lloyd, Delia Boylan, uses of Facebook, the new journalism, uses of Twitter, Delia Boylan Lloyd, social networking and friendship, "friending" people you don't know, The Huffington Post, Yahoo! Shine, taking a nom de plume, writing under a different name | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
July 29, 2010
Breaking up is hard to do. So said Neil Sedaka in that 1962 Billboard classic.
It was as true then as it is now, whether you’re in your teens or in your forties. So how do you actually move on after a broken heart?
Sometimes, time really does heal all wounds, and you’re capable – over time – of becoming friends with a former lover. I’m still close with one of my exes. So is my husband with one of his. These are people we exchange holiday cards with, make a point of visiting when we’re back in the States and even count their spouses as friends. In both cases, these exes form part of a larger social circle that helped to reinforce the transition to “friend.”
In another case, an old boyfriend contacted me out of the blue last year to give him some marital advice. Miraculously, it worked. He now credits me with playing a key role in keeping his marriage together. Somehow the act of helping him out in an impartial way enabled us – many years after the fact – to reunite as friends.
Of course, it’s not always that easy to make the jump to being friends. One friend of mine has solved this problem by continuing to sleep with his ex-girlfriend of 20 years ago well into his forties. In keeping with that old college adage that “It doesn’t count if it’s an ex” (Oh, to be 21 again!), he simply hasn’t moved on. For what it’s worth, this is also the strategy employed by business partners/sometime lovers Mikhael Blomkvist and Erika Berger of Dragon Tattoo fame. In the Stieg Larsson trilogy, Berger’s husband knows all about it and doesn’t mind either. (It is Sweden, after all.)
Alternatively, you can go the route of writing a letter to your ex. By expressing – longhand – all the things you still feel towards him or her, you can sometimes expunge any last traces of desire or remorse still swirling around inside your belly. This was the tactic adopted by my Politics Daily colleague Andrew Cohen, in a much-trafficked love letter to his ex earlier this week entitled “On Her Wedding Day: Saying Things Left Unsaid.” Whether you should go public with such a letter – or, as my colleague Suzi Parker suggests, “put it in a box and set it afire in the bathtub” – is ultimately your call. (If you want a quick primer on why you might want to think twice before publishing said missive, click here, here and here in that order, and then run for cover.)
You can also cyber-stalk your ex by “friending” them on Facebook to keep tabs on them from a safe distance. My colleague Sarah Wildman has a terrific piece on why that’s quite possibly not the best idea either, despite the appeal on some emotional level. It’s not just because casual On-line relationships can easily lead to the real thing. Rather, it’s because, as Sarah concludes, “some doors, however easily unlocked, are meant to remain closed.”
So where does that leave us?
I’ve often found that music works well if you want to “go there” without really “going there,” if you get my drift. At different points in my life, I’ve listened to Simple Minds’ Don’t You Forget About Me, The Grateful Dead’s Looks Like Rain and Silvio Rodriguez’ Mi Unicornio Azul when I wanted to cry into my beer.
At the end of the day, as I’ve written before, acknowledging the road not taken is just one of those bitter truths of adulthood. Sometimes you end up loving the wrong person. Or maybe – to quote that curl-up-in-a-fetal-position Dire Straits classic, Romeo and Juliet - “it was just that the time was wrong.”
Either way, life goes on.
How have you coped with a love that wasn’t meant to be?
Image: Love Letter by Wolfsoul via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
4 Comments | Relationships, Wisdom of the Ages | Tagged: the road not taken, break ups, sarah wildman, Andrew Cohen, Dire Straits, Suzi Parker, e-affairs, dealing with your ex, neil sedaka, breaking up is hard to do, becoming friends with your ex, "friending" your ex, giving relationship advice to an ex, sleeping with your ex, mikhail blomkvist, erika berger, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson trilogy, writing a love letter to your ex, staying in touch with your ex, cyber-stalking, when on line relationships lead to affairs, Don't You Forget About Me, Simple Minds, The Grateful Dead, It Looks Like Rain, Silvio Rodriguez, Mi Unicornio Azul, Romeo and Juliet, exes and Facebook | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
July 12, 2010
I read an article in the International Herald Tribune last Friday that really struck a chord. It was an essay by writer Joan Wickersham about the ways in which longtime couples develop their own private lexicons with which to communicate with one another.
She talks about this dynamic within the rubric of marriage, but her point applies to any long-term partnership. What’s crucial is that you’re together long enough to have a shared experience that which then evolves into a catch phrase that only the two of you can understand.
By way of example, Wickersham recounts the story of how – right after she married her husband – she got a job in a bank which she hated. Even though her husband had a job that he liked, he convinced her to quit her job (and he his) so that they could move somewhere else and both be happy. From there on out, “It’s like the bank” became their stock way to describe any situation that was especially bleak and dismal. Wickersham has another great story about the phrase “We’re just not serrated knife people” and what it came to mean within the context of their marriage.
My husband and I have been together for nearly 17 years and I know exactly what she means. I’m one of those people who’s obsessed with schedules. Once – on a trip to visit my husband’s parents in Atlanta – I perseverated for hours over whether, upon landing at Hartsfield Airport, we ought to go directly to his parents’ home or stop by and visit a friend first and risk being late. To this day, whenever I begin obsessing about our travel schedule, my husband will look at me and say: “Should we just go home or should we stop at Douglas Jackson’s?” (Not his real name.) It’s code for: Are you really going to go on about this all night?
Similarly, we’ve also incorporated a phrase to describe that feeling you get when you anticipate that someone is going to disagree with you. My husband and I met in graduate school and one of our early bonding experiences was over our feelings about a mutual acquaintance (we’ll call him Simon Collins.) Simon Collins was the kind of person who – no matter what you said – instinctively responded with something negative. I haven’t seen or talked to Simon in years. Nor has my husband. But whenever one of us raises a topic that might possibly prompt criticism, we preface it by saying “No Simon Collins!” to disarm the other person from any knee-jerk disapproval.
Neither of these phrases would mean anything to anyone but the two of us. And that’s the point.
I’ve written before about some of the things that make for a happy marriage/partnership: having shared interests; establishing a division of labor. But Wickersham’s column reminded me of one more crucial ingredient – feeling like a team. There are lots of ways to do this, but having a private language – a “civilization of two” as she puts it – is one of the principle ways that you can reinforce that bond.
How about you? What strange and impenetrable shorthands have you and your partner devised to communicate with one another?
I’d love to hear them…
Image: portrait of a happy couple – day 358 or Project 365 by purplemattfish via Flickr under a Creative Commons license
101 Comments | Relationships | Tagged: marriage, happy marriage, long-term relationships, keeping romance alive, secrets to a happy marriage, making marriage work, secrets of long term relationships, keeping relationships alive, language of marriage, private language of marriage, secret language of marriage, private languages, secret languages, codewords within marriage, catch phrases within marriage, Joan Wickersham, long term partnerships | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
July 8, 2010
Remember online dating? Gosh, that seems so last century. An iPhone application which allows cruising gay men to locate one another instantly using Global Positioning System technology is now spreading to the heterosexual market.
This latest rage in online romance is called Grindr. Grindr is a free, downloadable iPhone app that lets you find “gay, bi, curious guys near you.” It’s sort of a sexual version of toptable — an iPhone app that allows you to search for all the restaurants offering a certain cuisine in your immediate vicinity. Similarly, Grindr provides a grid of who else in your neighborhood is using Grindr, what they look like and — tantalizingly — exactly how far away they are from you, measured in feet. If there’s mutual interest, you can begin to “chat” and . . . who knows? The night is young.
Grindr has been hugely popular since its release in March 2009. There are now more than 700,000 men in 162 countries using Grindr, with 2,000 downloading it every day. A BlackBerry-friendly version was launched last month. It’s so popular that its creator — the 33-year-old American-born Joel Simkhai — will be releasing a “straight version” by the end of the year targeted at heterosexuals.
Read the rest of this article at www.PoliticsDaily.com…
Image: i-Blue GPS 757 logger and TOKompass midlet via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
3 Comments | Gadgets, Relationships | Tagged: monogamy, adultery, online dating, Grindr, Chatroulette, GPS for gay sex, GPS, iPhone app for gay sex, iPhone apps, Joel Simkhai, Grindr for straight people, Grindr for heterosexuals, toptable, old fashioned dating, dinner and a movie, technology and sex, social networking and STDs, Facebook and syphilis, e-affairs, email affairs, chexting, nexting, Prince, Darling Nikki | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
June 21, 2010
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Best friends are bad for you.
So says an article published in the New York Times last week. Titled “A Best Friend? You Must Be Kidding,” it describes a new trend among some educators and child psychologists who are actively discouraging children from having best friends. The concern is that forming exclusive one-on-one friendships in childhood encourages cliques and bullying. Some camps have even gone so far as to set up “friendship coaches” to help campers become friends with everyone else.
The reaction to this article has been both fast and furious. Last I checked there were some 387 comments on the post, most of them negative. “God, spare us the over-anxious theorists and control freaks,” wrote one commenter. Others noted the “Orwellian” nature of the anti-Best Friend movement, decrying the “pathological adult over-thinking” that lies behind it and denouncing it as yet another version of the “Nanny State.” It is an idea “beyond stupidity,” wrote someone else.
Well, call me a stupid, Orwellian, pathologically over-thinking adult (it’s OK, I’ve been called worse), but I found myself nodding in agreement while I read this article. So let me go out on a limb and tell you why I think the New York Times story has it right: Best friends aren’t great for kids. Especially for girls.
Read the rest of this story at www.PoliticsDaily.com…
Image: Best friends dec 1999…and forever by Irina Souiki via flickr under a Creative Commons License.
5 Comments | Parenting, Relationships | Tagged: helicopter parenting, over parenting, best friends, childhood friends, girls' friendships, anti-Best Friend movement, bullying, cliques, friendship coaches, friendships in childhood, are best friends good for you, mean girls, carly fiorina, barbara boxer's hair, abby sunderland | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
June 16, 2010
Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.
This week’s list is inspired by a barrage of recent scientific studies offering good news about middle age.
Middle age has long been conceptualized as that phase of life where we cease thinking about our potential as human beings, and start focusing on our limitations. No more. While not everything looks rosy (stay tuned for next week’s tip list), there are at least a few trends out there that do bode well for those of us hovering at the mid-point of our lives.
Here are five reasons to feel optimistic:
1. People are living longer. According to scientists, more people than ever before are living to older adulthood. In the U.S., the average lifespan has risen 30 years since 1900. And today’s older adults are better-educated, healthier, more active and more affluent than any previous generation. Plus, as I pointed out last week, the labor market is becoming more diverse and there will be more jobs for the over-55 set. So there’s lots more time – and more to do.
2. Our brains keep evolving. New research also shows that – contrary to the long-held view that our brains get fixed in early childhood – circuits in the adult brain are, in fact, continually modified by experience. The result? In some respects, we actually think better in middle age. Specifically, inductive reasoning and problem solving improves in the middle-aged brain. We get the gist of an argument better. We arrive at solutions more quickly. Even financial judgments peak in middle age.
3. People are happier over 50. This is also both surprising and welcome news. A survey of more than 340,000 people published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that overall feelings of wellbeing improve as we pass middle age. Specifically, levels of stress, worry and anger all dropped significantly for people in their fifties, while levels of happiness and enjoyment increased. While the study wasn’t designed to identify the causes of increased happiness, scholars speculated that with age comes greater wisdom and emotional intelligence. A similar study carried out in Canada also found that self-esteem is highest among middle-aged boomers. The corollary of all this research? We can probably expect to see fewer mid-life crises.
4. Even divorce can be positive. As the endless analyses of Al and Tipper Gore’s break up tell us, late divorce (i.e. divorce in marriages 20 years or longer) is increasingly common. But it’s also not necessarily a bad thing. A large number of articles that followed on the Gores’ split emphasized late divorce as a form of autonomy and self-actualization – especially for women – rather than just sticking it out for longevity’s sake. For me, at least, that was the first time I’d seen divorce as a cultural trend discussed in positive terms.
5. The AARP has had a makeover. Yup, that’s right folks. The American Association for Retired Persons (that’s AARP for all those in the know) has had an on-line overhaul in order to cater to the digital demands of the over-50 crowd. So for all you aging Facebook-ers out there, you have a new on-line hang out.
Image: AARP by Somewhat Frank via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
5 Comments | Aging Ungracefully, Health and Beauty, Lifestyle, Relationships, Tips List, Trends/Studies/Research, Work | Tagged: AARP, AARP makeover, AARP online, aging Facebook demographic, al and tipper gore, average lifespan rises, brain evolution, definition of middle age, divorce and autonomy, divorce and self-actualization, Gore breakup, happiness, happiness and middle age, happiness peaks at 50, inductive reasoning, labor market for older people, late divorce, longevity trends, mid-life crises, mid-life crisis, middle age, middle age and Facebook, middle aged brain, middle-aged boomers, more jobs for older people, new old age, optimism about middle age, people living longer, positive views of divorce, problem solving, self-esteem and middle age, thinking in middle age, trends in divorce, women and late divorce | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
June 3, 2010
I think it’s best if I just come out and say this up front: I’m not really sad that Al and Tipper Gore split up.
Yes, I know. I’m an outlier. Nearly everyone I know — and certainly everyone I’m reading — is outright depressed by this separation.
Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s a shame. And it’s a shame because — as my colleague Melinda Henneberger wrote recently — they seemed like a couple who were genuinely in love. Between the 40 years of marriage and the four beautiful kids and the whole high school sweetheart thing and, yes — the kisses — they really looked like they were in it for the long haul.
But somehow, I was much sadder when Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins split up. I was also sadder when — gulp — writer and public radio commentator Sandra Tsing Loh split with her man (and then went on an anti-marriage crusade.)
Why is this?
Read the rest of the article on www.PoliticsDaily.com…
Image: But It’s Over Now by Electronic Eye via Flickr under a Creative Commons License
7 Comments | Relationships | Tagged: al and tipper gore, al gore, anti-marriage crusade, divorce, gore break up, gore separation, happy marriages, high school sweethearts, marriage, melinda henneberger, Sandra Tsing Loh, sarandon and robbins split, susan sarandon, susan sarandon and tim robbins, tim robbins, tipper gore | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
May 27, 2010
The first ad ever to offer advice on abortion services was screened on British television Monday night. In a country long known for its reserved demeanor, the ad has provoked vociferous praise and condemnation.
Much like the Focus on the Family ad featuring Tim Tebow that aired in the United States during the Super Bowl this year, the so-called “abortion ad” is fairly ambiguous. The 30-second spot features a number of women from different walks of life who are “late.” A voice-over then says that “Being late for a period could mean pregnancy. If you’re pregnant and not sure what to do, Marie Stopes International can help.” There is no mention of the word abortion. Just a closing shot with the words “Are you late?” and a phone number underneath. (You can watch it here).
Marie Stopes International is a non-profit network of sexual and reproductive health clinics in the U.K. analogous to Planned Parenthood in the United States. According to their chief executive, Dana Hovig, “We hope the new ‘Are you late?’ campaign will encourage people to talk about their choices, including abortion, more openly and honestly, and empower women to reach confident, informed decisions.” Last year alone, Marie Stopes International received 350,000 calls to its 24-hour helpline. The organization decided to commission the ad after a study found that less than half of U.K .adults said they would know where to go for specialist advice if they faced an unplanned pregnancy, other than to their general practitioner.
But many do not see this merely as an ad about making informed choices…
Read the rest of this article at www.PoliticsDaily.com.
Image: 2007-07-14 Mattock Lane, Marie Stopes Clinic – All Deliveries To The Side Door
1 Comment | Current Events, Health and Beauty, Relationships | Tagged: abortion, abortion ad, abortion politics, Are You Late Campaign, Are You Late?, Dana Hovig, Focus on the Family, Marie Stopes International, Planned Parenthood, pro-choice, pro-life, Tim Tebow | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
