I’m having a hard time figuring out whether or not these Brooke Shields VW ads are deliberately riffing off her well-publicized struggle with postpartum depression:

Women everywhere are having babies just to get a new Volkswagen minivan.

It’s a joke, yes, and, har har, potentially a funny were it presented by, I dunno, Lori Loughlin. But Brooke Shields had a very public struggle with a terrible disease, a debilitating depression centered around the overwhelming feeling that having a baby ruined her life.

I highly highly doubt these ads are intended to be taken in this way, but, then…why Brooke Shields?

I just can’t stop thinking about it: the horror of her condition, the sadness of the isolation, all brought to bear by the televised dramatization of Brooke Shields’ postpartum thoughts, as she stared aimlessly out the window, day in and day out, contemplating suicide and wrestling with immense self-loathing and a frightening indifference to her newborn child.

Man, I really shouldn’t have had a baby just to get a new Volkswagon.

Drawing attention to and normalizing postpartum depression was certainly a wonderful thing for Brooke Shields to do (as was making Tom Cruise look like a total dweebus). So good on Brooke for that.

But these ads just make me sad and somewhat panic-stricken. Which is totally not the mood I tend to be in before I buy cars.

(It probably would have been more effective for Shields to riff off of Suddenly Susan, thus leaving viewers feeling nostalgic and slightly annoyed, a much more consumeristic state of mind.)