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Wikipedia

For the 2004 film, please see Poster Boy

For the Street Artist, please see Posterchild (street artist)

The phrase poster child (sometimes poster boy) originally referred to a child afflicted by some disease or deformity whose picture is used on posters to generate sympathy, in order to raise money to combat that particular disease; "he was the poster child for muscular dystrophy".

However, the term has entered the popular vernacular, and is frequently used rhetorically to refer to a person whose actions or behavior seem to support or to be the perfect representative of a cause, a movement or an idea. In this metaphorical sense, it is often used ironically, or as a term of derisive.

Examples

Ryan White was considered a poster child for societal acceptance of AIDS, after he contracted the disease from a blood transfusion and was expelled from his school.
Bobbi Campbell was a self-professed "KS poster boy" in the earliest years of the AIDS epidemic.
An example of its rhetorical use by George Voinovich: "It is my opinion that John Bolton is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be".
In the debate over capital punishment, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is often cited by anti-death-penalty activists as a "poster child for the death penalty" because his indifference to his victims, especially those who were children, made him appear irredeemably inhuman.