It’s an old trick, and a common childhood game – to cut out an adult head from a magazine photograph and paste it onto the body of a baby. Evian use it on their latest bus-stop advertising campaign.
The first visual message, very boring, is that if you drink a litre of Evian water you will be as stunningly beautiful and alarmingly thin as this model. The second message, slightly tongue-in-cheek, together with the Live Young caption in the corner and the baby’s body T-shirt, is that you will retain the youthfulness, innocence, playfulness and perfect skin that you had when you were a little baby.
The subliminal pro-life message, paid for by Evian, is philosophical: whatever you think about the ‘personhood’ of a baby, this baby is you; you are the same human being; it’s one continuous life; looking backwards – once you were a baby and now you have become an adult; looking forwards – this is the baby who will become (if it survives) an adult.
When I look at a photo of myself at 15 years old, or 5 years, or 5 months, or when I look at an ultrasound scan image of myself at 36 weeks, or 24, or 12 – I say ‘this is me’. It’s a hugely different me, but it’s still me. I ‘identify’ (at a personal level) with this image, with this human being, because there is an ‘identity’ (at a biological and philosophical level) between me today and me back then; just as I identify with the me who existed 2 minutes ago. Identity doesn’t undermine difference – of course there are differences. It just allows you to affirm, at a deeper level, a continuity of existence, and gives you a sound reason for saying ‘that’s me’ or ‘we are the same person’.
The poster reminds you of the continuity between the adult ‘you’ and the infant ‘you’. It doesn’t take much to then make the link between the infant ‘you’ and the ‘you’ in the womb. And that reminds you of the importance of remembering that the human being in the womb is another ‘you’ and not just an ‘it’.
Bridges and Tangents 
The ‘me’ we all feel inside at any given time, absolute in its present moment, does not age or can not be other than itself, at its core. At all ages.
Fascinating that at the very same moment the shell ages, whilst Inside we only ever expand and grow and experience and become fully us, ageless.
A little like having had five children and never having another heart to Love each one with, but just Loving all the more with one heart, without it ever growing bigger, or being in sections.
I have an amazing 3 dimensional photo of my last born in my tummy at 21 weeks. Even then it is fully her.
This advertising campaign reminds me of my childhood game of misfits, where you had separate feet body and head cards and you made funny people and tried to get matching sets.
We’re the same person at every age. Our parents don’t mourn the loss of the baby we once were. Children don’t mourn the loss of the young parents they once had, that are now elderly. It’s only when someone finally dies at whatever age that might be, that we mourn the part of them that was always there.
I guess you could make another ad with a frail old woman on the T-Shirt, just to remind everyone what euthanasia takes away.
The list of things that can be done is very long. I particularly like Tonia’s suggestion about the frail old woman and euthanasia.