The Most Grotesque Baby Face

The first time I saw this baby face, my first reaction was one of disgust. I looked at it again. Definitely the most grostesque face I’ve seen. It is totally shocking. What in the world is this doing on a poster? On a shop front in an Orchard area shopping centre? I was thinking perhaps it was one of those “shock” advertisements, like how cigarette packs here carry grotesque photos to discourage people from smoking. But it was nothing of that sort.

The poster features a baby’s face, with his or her mouth wide open. What is wrong is around the mouth. It looks bloodied. It looked like the area of the face around the mouth has been mutilated. Or a carnivore baby that just had his or her feast of, hmm, raw meat.

It turns out that the poster was about “organic facial”. It was on a shop that sells the idea of using organic skin care products. Organic skin care products are basically made from ingredients grown without the use of pesticides, synthetic fertilisers, or genetically modified organisms. Somewhat like what organic food is.

But the baby’s face is still grotesque. I wondered what has the baby’s face got to do with organic skin care? Well, on closer inspection, it seems like the bloodied mouth is actually meant to be some sort of organic skin care product. The use of the baby, I suppose, was to depict baby soft skin?

Whoever made the poster ought to be fired. The graphics makes a very wrong first impression. It is simply terrible. The fact that the poster got me talking about it, and perhaps got other people noticing it, is not a good excuse. I think you could have made a plenty good attractive poster without making the wrong first impression.