Love Carefully and Without ‘Over-bearing Fears’: The Persuasive Power of Authenticity in Late 1980s British AIDS Education Material for Adolescents

This article examines the 1987 British AIDS education leaflet Love Carefully: Use a condom, drawing on methodologies from both the history of emotion and literary analysis. The informative leaflet, produced collaboratively by the sexual health charities Brook and the Family Planning Association, was intended to prevent the spread of HIV among heterosexual adolescents, a group increasingly viewed as ‘at risk’ by adult producers of health education globally. Steeped in British teenage popular culture, it deployed an introduction from well-known teenage agony aunt Melanie McFadyean, a cartoon strip, and statements from celebrities. The cartoon offered a representation of the difficulties experienced by heterosexual teenagers negotiating the prospect of penetrative sex with a new partner, offering a successful example of condom negotiation, while sympathetically examining why some found condom use and AIDS difficult subjects to broach. The article argues the leaflet deployed emotions and authenticity to persuade teenagers to practise safer sex.