Women’s Web is saying Goodbye! Please make sure you read this important notification.
Is there a timetable of a woman's life that we need to keep up with? No. That makes this ad by Tanishq irrelevant and offensive.
Is there a timetable of a woman’s life that we need to keep up with? No. That makes this ad by Tanishq irrelevant and offensive.
I will be 40 in a few months, and sorry to break the perfect bubble, but I don’t have most of the things that the new ad from Tanishq introducing its new colourful collection, speaks of.
Picture the scene. A birthday party for the 40-year-old lady in a perfect pink setting. The friends singing, evident things pointing out her age and remembering her perfect young waist size, and her then boyfriend and now husband, as in when they first met. Song goes on to list her age-appropriate achievements, her perfect kids, her perfect job and her perfectly rose painted cheeks go even more pink as her friends gift her a perfect colourful diamond set.
And everyone smiles including the husband who has just been called a well-trained husband. The ad ends up making you slightly irritated if not smiling or grinning, because guess what life is not a bed of roses.
Like any kid from the 90’s I grew up on a good dose of advertisements, which had perfect cozy homes, set in yellow light with white paint. Those picket-fenced lawns had a beautiful golden retriever and a lovely baby running after it. Sometimes it had hot jalebis, Rasna and Fanta’s or Pepsi or Maggie or Colgate as the background for these stories. Every set up was perfect; people were doing things assigned to their age. A young mother, a slightly white haired elegant grandmother, a beautiful kid who hugs and kisses his mother when he comes back from school or a husband with a handbag who has had a rough day at work, and needs a freshly brewed coffee, given by a young smiling chick, probably his wife.
And here we are 20 years later, still speaking of people and especially women who have to have certain things by a certain age.
I don’t have most of those things this new ad sings of.
It sings of a perfect friend circle – nope.
It sings of kids grown up, gone, and settled too. Relax but mine aren’t yet born.
It sings of a career where the lady is the boss and calls the shots. Well! Not either, cause, I freelanced and learnt music and yoga for most of my years when I was not in a job. So that means I couldn’t be making a steady successful career like the lady in the ad.
Her friends call her husband as well trained, now whatever that means, don’t even get me started on that.
The ad is extremely offensive in so many ways. And it shouldn’t be only me, it’s those many women I know who still have their song within, who have their unborn children in their womb for reasons they know best. Who don’t believe in training their spouses so that they can be of convenience to them?
Each time this ad comes on TV, it makes me squirm and cringe in my seat, and ask why God why, one more time. Why didn’t my life go according to the timetable? Finally one day, God answered, “Because I did not make this timetable, you guys did”.
To that, I would say, ‘fair enough’ and move on.
On a more serious note, life doesn’t have to go according to a plan, or does it? If it does, great, but when it doesn’t such ads make you feel like the smallest person on earth.
Since when did our modern, empowered woman have to fit some ideal image of a success. If she is not working, she is not producing babies, if she is not doing the drill, what the hell is she doing? No birthday candles for her, no exclusive clothes designed for her, no designer handbags made for her grocery shopping sprees. No jewelry designed to celebrate her beauty in the ordinary life she leads. There is absolutely no product for the forgotten woman, who is not part of the main stream; who is not adding anyway to the economy. For God sake, she is not even buying nappies. Common, who doesn’t even do this much!
This woman, who has dreams bottled up inside her, who struggles to make it through one more day without seeing another ad trying to rub it in to her, that hey, “You didn’t make it!”
Not even friends and cousins think she deserves a return gift, at their kid’s birthday party. For all you know, this woman, spent more than half a day selecting the perfect gift for the child.
The reality of it is, many of us do feel left out in this race. Such in your face advertisements are a slap on the face of those many women. And it is indeed sending out a very regressive thought process of sticking to the “timetable”.
Image source: YouTube
A writer and singer by soul and homemaker by role, I am Malini Misra. I have dabbled with all the aspects of media, be it print, television, and also worked on research of a book read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
Please enter your email address