Slate.com Table of Contents explainer Dead by Election Day family ad report card Lost Cause The Pill Killer fighting words Advanced Search Disregarding Henry books foreigners Cheney's Handiwork A Temporary Thaw books foreigners Is Humanitarian Intervention Dead? The Black President chatterbox human nature Sarah Palin's College Daze Undead Babies chatterbox human nature GOP, RIP? Debate Bait corrections jurisprudence Corrections Where the Trail Leads Next culturebox jurisprudence Nobel Gas The Downsides of Diversity culturebox low concept The Bluest Eyes McCain's Next Stunt day to day low concept To Choke or Not To Choke? The Poetry of Sarah Palin dear prudence map the candidates To Abort or Not To Abort? Recovering do the math medical examiner We're Down $700 Billion. Let's Go Double or Nothing! Still in the Lyme Light drink moneybox Drinking Away Your Sorrows How the Bailout Is Like a Hedge Fund. dvd extras moneybox Your DVD Player Sleeps With the Fishes Washington to New York: Drop Dead election scorecard moneybox Turning Blue The Happy Talk Express explainer movies Who Moderates the Moderators? All Aboard the Crazy Train explainer movies You Say Depression, I Say Recession Shyness Is Nice explainer obit What Makes a Lawyer "Special"? Paul Newman explainer other magazines Does Congress Always Take Off for Rosh Hashanah? Virginia Slim Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC 1/105 poem the browser "The Crying Hill" Blogging for Dollars politics the chat room Track the Presidential Polls on Your iPhone Up for Debate politics the dilettante Champ vs. Doggone The Paul Newman Scene I Can't Get Out of My Head politics the dismal science The Fact-Free Debate You've Just Been Offered a Great New Job in Charlotte! politics the good word Tie Goes to Obama Diagramming Sarah press box the good word Don't Blame Gwen Ifill If the Veep Debate Sucks What Kind of Accent Does Sarah Palin Have? Schoolhouse Rock the green lantern Replication Should We Dispose of Disposals? Science today's business press Sex Dramedy Markets Pray House Can Deliver shopping today's papers Home Slice A League of Their Own slate v today's papers From the Conventions to the First Debate in Three Minutes Upping the Ante slate v today's papers Dear Prudence: Who's Your Daddy? Take the Bill and Run sports nut today's papers Cocktail Chatter: Baseball Playoffs Edition Failure To Lead swingers today's papers Chinese Democracy Compromising Positions swingers today's papers So You Think You're a Swing Voter? Critical Mass swingers today's papers Don't Take It for Granite Bombs Over a Bailout technology today's pictures Everything Means Nothing to Me Today's Pictures technology twitterbox I'm a PC, and I'm Worried About My Image Gwen Ifill Lost This Debate television war stories The End of Star Wars She Still Knows Nothing television war stories Subprime Time Obama Wins on Foreign Policy The Big Sort what's up, doc? House Members Aren't Supposed To Just "Vote Their Districts" Burnout U Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC 2/105 talking solemnly about the pill's pros. The commercial ditches xx factor xxtra the usual side-effects voice-over, instead enlisting a lovely The Un-Hillary brunette to deliver lines like, "DRSP is a different kind of hormone that may increase potassium, so you shouldn't take Yaz if you have liver, kidney, or adrenal disease. …" It doesn't quite click—why would this woman warn her twentysomething friends that women over 35 shouldn't smoke on the pill? And ad report card why are her friends nodding intently instead of downing their The Pill Killer drinks while their eyes glaze over? Can a new ad make a contraceptive vaginal insert seem cool? By Torie Bosch The NuvaRing commercial, by contrast, uses lighthearted details Monday, September 29, 2008, at 6:50 AM ET to suggest that birth control can be a no-sweat part of your life. It shrewdly portrays the pill as an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy, The Spot: "Tired of your old birth-control routine?" a voice- something out of your mother's or even grandmother's youth, over asks. Synchronized swimmers ring the edge of a round like a one-piece bathing costume, a swim cap, even pool, moving in unison and chanting the days of the week in synchronized swimming, an activity that prizes conformity over turn. They let out sighs of frustration after each repetition, individualism. In an animated version of the ad, the pool deck exhausted by the tedium. "Maybe it's time to break free from the even appears to be made of checkered linoleum, like a '50s-era pack with NuvaRing," the announcer suggests. One swimmer kitchen. The NuvaRing, on the other hand, is the choice of the jumps out of the pool, shakes her hair out of her bathing cap, freedom-loving, loose-haired, midriff-bearing, sunglasses- and tears off part of her suit, turning her modest one-piece into a wearing girl who flirts with the waiter proffering drinks and has sexy bikini. She lounges beneath an umbrella while the other her own style and idea of fun. swimmers keep at it, then heads to the hot tub with some girlfriends as the voice-over chatters about blood clots. "Say Of course, the commercial has a point that it's important—and good-bye to the old song-and-dance and hello to NuvaRing," the sometimes difficult—to take traditional birth control pills with announcer concludes. (Click here to watch the ad.) clockwork regularity. Women risk getting pregnant if they fail to follow the pill's rather stringent instructions. It's not hard to skip a day or two, fail to take it at the same time every day, forget to The genius of this ad is that it makes something as simple as start a new pack, or neglect to use backup contraception when swallowing a pill once a day seem arduous, old-fashioned, and taking antibiotics or other medications that can reduce the pill's quaint. The spot plugs NuvaRing, a contraceptive vaginal insert. efficacy. Planned Parenthood's Web site notes that taken as Instead of taking a pill daily, you wear the NuvaRing—which directed, fewer "than 1 out of 100 women will get pregnant each uses hormones similar to those in the pill—for three weeks, take year," while "[a]bout 8 out of 100 women will get pregnant each a week off, and then insert a fresh ring. No longer will you have year if they don't always take the pill each day as directed." to take time out of your busy schedule—or your afternoons hanging poolside—to pop a pill, the ad suggests. What the NuvaRing ad fails to acknowledge is that using the ring properly may not be easy, either. When you take the pill NuvaRing's ad isn't the first to present the traditional pill as a daily, you get into a rhythm and associate it with, say, brushing tiny, pastel-colored ball and chain. One birth-control patch, your teeth or going to bed. Remembering to remove the Ortho Evra, used the slogan "On your body, off your mind." But NuvaRing every third week and replace it every fourth seems the synchronized swimming spot, which uses playful imagery more difficult. Are users supposed to associate these changes and a catchy days-of-the-week chant in place of a heavy-handed with the appearance of the full moon? The arrival of the new slogan, is insidiously persuasive. Although taking the pill is not Real Simple? Writing a check for the cell phone bill? Setting an at all hard, this ad had me briefly pondering making the switch alarm in Outlook might work, but it's not always convenient to myself. change your vaginal ring when you happen to be checking your e-mail. NuvaRing's manufacturer does nod to this problem on its Part of the spot's appeal lies in its light tone. The makers of Web site, offering small timers for users to carry around with condoms and Viagra have long used tongue-in-cheek humor to them. But how are you supposed to remember to check the make the hard sell. But women's birth-control spots have gone timer? the earnest route, showing women constantly preoccupied with—and burdened by—the pill. An ad for a pill called Yaz Grade: B+ The ad's smartest move is glossing over the ick blasts a peppy cover of the '80s Scandal hit "Goodbye to You" factor of the contraceptive device itself. It doesn't mention how and promises that Yaz will relieve menstruating women of you insert it, how it affects your period, whether it can fall out, fatigue, cramps, irritability, and acne. Another Sex and the City- and what to do if that happens. Those details are left to the Web inspired Yaz spot shows sophisticated, cocktail-sipping women site and your doctor. One fairly alarming warning: "NuvaRing® Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC 3/105 can slip out while you're removing a tampon, straining during a vice president as a quick study, exhibiting a command of policy bowel movement, or during intercourse." Maybe there's minutiae, an iron will, and a finely honed strategic sense. In an something to be said for sticking with the old-fashioned. administration that has become infamous for its incompetence, Cheney is the man who knows what he's doing. But so does Gellman. His praise for Cheney's strengths as an infighter and policymaker, though no doubt sincere, are also a Advanced Search backhanded form of damnation, since they complete his portrait Friday, October 19, 2001, at 6:39 PM ET of a stealthily ruthless, hypercompetent majordomo.