Here’e the next installment of Bad Ads. (here’s the previous one) I have seen Kaya skin clinic’s advertisements quite a few times, always advertising skin care (and by allusion skin fairness) but find their ad. on hair-free treatments really objectionable.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdZrl_AGYhY]
The words in this advertisement are :
“Pari ho tum, Apne pankh na chupa na,
Kali ho tum, Khilne se mat ghabrana na,
Haseen ho tum, Gumsum mat ho jaana”
which roughly translates to :
“You are an angel, Don’t hide your wings,
You are a flower bud, Don’t be afraid to bloom,
You are beautiful/laughter, Don’t be sad”
At the end of the song, a voiceover says to not shy away from life because of unwanted hair.
Admirable words to the little poem there, but in appaling context. The ad. shows a young woman noticing the hair on her arms and rolling down her sleeves, and also hesitating to say hello to a male friend. Because **gasp** what if the guy actually sees HAIR on a female arm ? Something terrible would surely ensue – blindness, the plague, the end of the world ? We wouldn’t want to bring that about now, would we ladies ?
The visuals and the song/voiceover indicate that a woman who hasn’t shorn herself of all bodily hair must somehow feel lesser, and that would cause her to shy away from life. That there is something wrong with having bodily hair – the implication being that a woman must be purged of all hair to spread her wings/bloom/be happy.
What utter nonsense !
I use makeup, wax, thread my eyebrows etc. but I totally resent being told that a woman needs to adhere to this unspoken “code of attractiveness” to be happy. As I was growing up, yeah you would see attractive, leggy, hairless models in magazines, but maybe with less media this whole “women have a duty to be pretty” thing wasn’t pushed on us too hard. And growing up you did some of the beauty things that you were comfortable with and some you didn’t. They didn’t come with strings attached i.e.; I wasn’t unhappy when I didn’t shave my legs.
Although anal people are duty-bound to point out to you that you must defuzz that almost unseeable hair on your upper arms, and that ring on your finger would look so much prettier if you only got rid of the hair on the knuckle. Yes of course, so it goes, and people have tongues and they will use them. Me, I am inured; to ignore politely is an art learnt and honed. But educating our daughters into believing that they are complete women, natural bodily hair, dark skin color and all, is going to be hard.
