Brooke Shields’ VW Commercial: So Not Cool

If you’ve switched on your television in the last couple of weeks, chances are you’ve seen the VW commercials for their newest model, the Routan, starring none other than actress Brooke Shields. In them, Shields is meant to tell a sarcastic, yet riveting and monumental story about how there is an incredible baby boom taking place all over the country, because people are looking for an excuse to buy the Routan, which is being billed more or less as a family vehicle

In the commercial, Shields says things like “women everywhere are having babies just to get the new VW Routan and “Remember, have a baby for love, not for German engineering,” while she confronts pregnant couples and asks the public for help to conduct this “growing epidemic.”

I get it. It’s meant to be funny and satirical, and forgive me if I’m taking this too seriously, but it seems a bit distasteful to me. The main reason being that this is a woman who suffered from postpartum depression and wrote a book called “Down Came the Rain” that detailed her experiences with the illness.

So to hear her try to give the subject of having babies for “German engineering” a funny spin, is perhaps the unfunniest thing of all.

Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe it’s because I hate car commercials in general, that I can’t stand a celebrity-endorsed one even more. I’m not sure. This isn’t even against VWs, as I drive one and have ever since I got my license. I just know I feel really uneasy hearing her talk about babies when I know what she went through in her personal life.

Either way, I hate gimmicks like this to sell cars. Instead of using Brooke Shields, why doesn’t VW choose to talk about how they’re trying to combat global warming by developing alternative energy vehicles? Surely, the era of celebrity endorsements is on the decline. I hope.