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Why I think the new ads for 5 star and MTS are offensive and regressive both to women and children
I was shaken out of my totally zoned out state a couple of weeks back while I was vegetating in front of a cartoon channel only to please my son, and a brand new ad for 5 star popped up. Why?
It showed a lady popping out a baby and my eyes literally popped out! Did they really show a baby being born for a 5 star ad? Another product also sports a similar ad.
This one that assaulted my sensibilities is for MTS, where a baby is born ready to use the Internet. He crawls and then walks out while the medical staff and his mother with her legs in the stirrups watches amazed. Yes, I was amazed at the totally senseless ad and the uncaring attitude of the product promoters and what effect it would have on the psyche of little children glued to their television sets.
Even worse, did they show such ads on a cartoon/children’s channel?! Is it just me or are the manufactures, advertisers and channel programmers all going crazy? Why has the ad not been banned?
I am not an overly protective mother and advocate the importance of hands-on learning by a child. Yet, this ad left me outraged and wanting to shut the channel and erase the memory from my child. Some might say I am over reacting and children need to know the facts about the ‘birds and bees’, etc, etc. But do we really need to expose 5 year olds to the facts of childbirth? They do know that the ‘baby come from mummy’s tummy’ but do we have to subject them to those visuals? Do they really need to know the graphic details?
I checked the ads on Google and one was tagged as ‘#conditionserioushai’. True the condition is really serious if we are reduced to such unimaginative visuals and crass story-lines for selling a brand loved through the years.
My ‘mother- monitor’ was bleeping on loudspeaker mode; what about yours?
Pic credit: Devon (Used under a CC license)
Inderpreet writes for her love of writing, edits manuscripts and reads endlessly. An authors' editor with a decade of experience, she provides manuscript critique, linguistic editing, substantive editing and developmental editing for fiction and nonfiction. read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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