On Friday, Mark Joseph Stern of Slate excitedly shared a new Cheerios ad he billed as "impossibly cute as you might expect." Why all the fervor? The ad centers on two Québécois gay dads named André and Jonathan and their newly adopted daughter Raphaëlle.
Under the title "The Cheerios Effect," the ad features little talk about Cheerios and much about how the two men met, fell in love, and adopted a child into their life. In fact, Cheerios itself has less than 30 seconds of screen time throughout the nearly three-minute running length. Other than the cereal bowl resting on the table while André and Jonathan talk and the obvious metaphor of three Cheerios drifting closer to each other to form a trinity in a sea of white milk, the ad doesn't have much to say about cereal but certainly says a good deal about same-sex adoption.
By the two men's account, the decision to adopt the adorable little Raphaëlle came because their relationship had been going so well and they just "couldn't keep all this luck and love" to themselves. Also, as Jonathan states, "in 2014, it's a possibility!"
André & Jonathan allude to the issue of Raphaëlle growing up with no mother, but stress it will not be problem because "she has love."
“If Raphaëlle has a problem [with having] two dads,” Jonathan tells us, “it’s not going to be our fault.” Mark Joseph Stern took the statement as implying that "only hateful outsiders could convince Raphaëlle that it’s somehow wrong to have two fathers."
"We all love to connect," read the titles as the ad ends. "That's the Cheerios effect."
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