‘Who’s the Daddy?’ Billboard sparks controversy in military community

A billboard advertising paternity tests in Virginia is sparking controversy with critics claiming it depicts military spouses as being unfaithful.

The billboard, which is located in downtown Hampton, depicts a soldier and a mailman standing side by side next to the words “Who’s the Daddy?”

A second billboard -located in the Naval town of Norfolk- shows a woman with a Pinocchio nose and reads “Is the Mother a Liar?”

The billboards are generating controversy, particularly among military spouses and their families.

“I’m offended as a woman that this is something that is being put on billboards,” said Erin McMenamin, a Norfolk resident who has been a military spouse for 15 years.

McMenamin is a counselor for a psychological services firm and feels the billboard sends the wrong messages to service members and military children.

“They just send a message that men should be worry about what their wives are doing while they are gone,” she said.

Labs To Go -the company who the billboards are advertising for- claims that the billboards were meant to be funny, not offensive.

“It was absolutely not to offend anyone,” Labs To Go president Cheree Owens unapologetically told News 3. “It was to spark humor, and it only may offend someone who may fit in that category.”

Owens said she chose a man in uniform because they just so happen to make up a large bulk of her clientele.

It’s reality,” she said. “This is something that I see in my office every day. A lot of military are coming in [and] having paternity tests because they were gone.”

Owens says she has no intent of taking the billboards down.

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