MOTHERS
by
Douglas Messerli
Lonelyleap
Production Company How We Family / 2015 [2.06 minutes] [commercial
advertisement]
What
I believe to be the second in the series of Tylenol ads featuring family,
presumably also written and directed by Dustin Lance Black, was a 2.06 minute
ad featuring only women, each talking about their role as mothers. The first is
an Asian woman who simply announces “I’m a mother,” followed by another woman
who declares she has two children. The third reveals that she is “a single
mom,” and by the fourth revealing that she has a great family made up of two
moms.
Another states that she “did it through a
surrogate.” And yet another that she has a “transitioning son.” The original
Asian woman argues “There’s so much discussion about what’s acceptable, what’s
not acceptable. That word shouldn’t even play in the dynamic of family.”
Another argues it all depends upon how much love you give them.
And so it goes, another woman saying how
deeply she bonded when she put her son down to bed with her wife. My son got
sick in Brazil, and that’s when I realized “I’m a mom.” “Family is a group of
people that create love.” “What makes families stay together, adds yet another,
“is love.”
“I love my son, and I want him to be as
happy, as healthy, and successful, as he can be.”
This moving testament to all kinds of
mothers, most of them single or raising their child with a lesbian lover,
provides yet a fuller dimension to the notion of family that Tylenol sought out
in this series of ads.
Los
Angeles, July 7, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).
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