Poster child

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For the 2004 film, please see Poster Boy

For the Street Artist, please see Posterchild (street artist)

A poster that generates sympathy for a child in order to promote children's health and solicit donations

The phrase poster child (sometimes poster boy) originally referred to a child afflicted by some disease or deformity whose picture is used on posters to generate sympathy, in order to raise money to combat that particular disease; "he was the poster child for muscular dystrophy".

However, the term has entered the popular vernacular, and is frequently used rhetorically to refer to a person whose actions or behavior seem to support a cause or an idea. In this metaphorical sense, it is often used ironically, or as a term of derision.^{[citation needed]}

See also: embodiment, epitome, and archetype

[edit] Examples

• Ryan White was considered a poster child for societal acceptance of AIDS, after he contracted the disease from a blood transfusion and was expelled from his school.
• Bobbi Campbell was a self-professed "KS poster boy" in the earliest years of the AIDS epidemic.
• An example of its rhetorical use by George Voinovich: "It is my opinion that John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be". ^[1]
• In the debate over capital punishment, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is often cited by anti-death-penalty activists as a "poster child for the death penalty" because his indifference to his victims, especially those who were children, made him appear irredeemably inhuman.^[2]

[edit] References