I am starting today a post that will continue to highlight advertisements and their absolute disregard to the conversations the recent murder of young girl have started in India. A culture and a society soaked with misogyny and patriarchy needs to be brought under the lens. The recent report of the committee on Amendments to Criminal Law will be talked about in the days to come  but that report will need to be broken down into what we can do as daily citizens, men and women of the grand old civilization play a part to lift the weight of an age-old way of life.

Lets begin with this advertisement that I have seen at least 10 times in the last 3 hours today on various news channels etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tzs_bZLDLw

The advertisement plays out the stereotypical roles in household, in society, in relationships between men and women. This is being fed to us daily on all channels in the name of purchasing a specific insurance product feature. I dare the advertising genius behind this advertisement to redo this advertisement to instead depict scenes from real life:

[Scene 1: Husband beating wife and then apologizing]

Husband: I will never beat you again

Wife: Likh key dogey kya?

[Scene 2: Meeting between the girls and boys family to finalize the wedding]

Boys father: We don’t want anything, just your daughter to be our daughter

Girls father: Likh key dogey kya?

I wish our advertisers joined in the conversations by being proactive and not perpetuating the stereotype that is killing our girls and women every single day. I invite you my 1 or 2 readers to chime in and suggest advertisements that irk you and hopefully when each and every member of our social fabric joins demands for justice and equality perhaps then we can change?

When I was born my grandmother didnt see me for my first three days. First child of her last son, a girl! How will the family name continue? But I was her favourite grandchild ‘ever’ very soon (oh thats a big status being one of 19 first cousins) 🙂 ofcourse my baby brother crying ALL the time helped bolster my status.

Times have changed people say, but for a large majority they havent. They face it day in and day out, Meena and women from her community show they will change and then need to change for women.