You know it’s Women’s Day, when there are too many posts on the internet preaching womanhood, or glorifying our “sacrifices”. Like Holi and Diwali, corporates make a big show of it, of course brands do that too – just so it comes across that they treat women well. Since it’s mostly a big show, and nothing substantial, these brands often miss the point. Like Himalaya did this year.
A Redditor shared a newspaper ad from the front page of The Hindu. It’s so big, it’s like they’re rubbing it in the face. The advertisement features women’s cricketers, and goes on to talk about how we shouldn’t judge a woman’s beauty by the colour of her skin. And well, it was all fine until they finally added their product which markets ‘natural glow’.
Basically, the skincare brand lists all the reasons why these women are beautiful – their work and talent that makes them beautiful. But it’s all a setup to sell a face wash that leads to ‘glowing skin’. Hypocricy, much? The ad reads:
“Don’t judge women’s beauty by the colour of their skin. It’s just not fair.”
The wordplay isn’t as clever as they think it is, and the internet thinks so too.
These ‘tokens’ somehow make things worse. I’d rather not be reminded that I’m ‘special’, if this is the reminder.