'Insecurities to incredibilities': Cheeky parody takes on women empowerment advertisements
Advertisements with messages of women empowerment are all the rage these days. Femvertising, as it has come to be called, is cashing in on feminism or at least some corporate version of it. Under the garb of progressive ideas, products from sanitary napkins to fairness creams are being marketed with some cliche about a strong, empowered woman.
The video above created by a Canadian advertising agency John St. is a pitch for a fake new agency called Jane St. geared towards making "women power" ads, which playfully lampoons this model of marketing.
Testimonials of the agency's employees earnestly tell us how they are preparing for "tomorrow's insecurities today" by placing therapists in schools to ask girls questions such as whether they are teased about their moustache. Since the women may not know that they have these insecurities, it becomes important that they be dug up, working on a model called C-LITT: core lady insecurities to target. The Planning Director of the company meanwhile tells us how the strategy has shifted from "exploiting their (women's) insecurities to empowering their incredibilities."
Indian advertisements like the "my choice" Vogue commercial starring Deepika Padukone from earlier this year mouthed weird statements like "I am the snowflake, not the snowfall" to a Fair and Lovely Commercial where empowered by the fairness cream a woman can speak up about when she wants to get married, products have found means to liberate and save women.
A Bournvita commercial showing a woman training her son for a race ultimately ends with a lesson on what makes for an "acchi ma". And there is of course Dove which makes seemingly sensitive ads for women, where the women are weighed down by their lack of beauty.
In the ad below, having to choose between a door marked "beautiful" and another marked "average" all women choose average until one of them has a eureka moment and the joy of choosing beautiful is discovered. Women should have the confidence to believe and choose beautiful because really what else is the point of living?
The more things change the more they stay the same is true after all. Not all ads are bad of course, some manage to pack a meaningful message in there, but most others are just trying to ride this current wave of feminism to sell more products.
