Head and Shoulders' new ad stands above the rest... in misogyny

Here I thought it was impossible to outdo the creams which will give us women our confidence back by making us and our vaginas fairer. But I underestimated the advertising industry. There’s a new star in town which has managed to position itself head and shoulders above any other misogynistic Indian commercial. And it’s not even a product for women. This is a product for men, which sells itself by pooping all over women. It also reveals some secrets none of us knew. It seems women’s shampoos have a magical emasculating effect on men who use them. They suck all the testosterone out of men, while pumping them with oestrogen. And the only thing young Indian wives  -  who shop at malls, go to the gym and have fancy homes with fancy TVs – talk about and are concerned with, is their weight, what happened on the daily TV soap and whether their maids are coming to work or not. [caption id=“attachment_1516773” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] A screengrab from the advertisement.[/caption] Am I delirious? No. But I think Head and Shoulders might be. They’ve launched a new range of shampoos for men. The first time I saw one of their ads, I checked whether I was watching Comedy Central and whether it was one of their parody ads. No such luck. This was a creation of some genius creative director and an even more cerebral marketing team at Head and Shoulders which realised that the best way to sell a new product is buy slamming their largest target audience for all their other products – which is women. There are three main commercials in the series which ends with the tag line “Stop before you stop being a man”. What must men stop doing before they get totally emasculated? They must stop using their wives’ shampoos. In the first ad, titled by the Head and Shoulders India team on youtube as “Head and Shoulders Men: Jeans Don’t Lie”, a man is trying on a pair of jeans in a store. But he’s more concerned about whether the jeans are making his butt look fat. He questions his wife about it, who looks at him in shock. Because how could a man possibly be concerned with his weight or looks? That’s the prerogative of only us women. Then out of the blue, a shampoo bottle flies into the frame and knocks the man out. A disembodied voice then says, “Stop before you stop being a man. Aap ki biwi ka shampoo chodo. Get the new Head and Shoulders for Men and rediscover the man you once were. Tabhi toh confidence ke saath, zindagi milegi dobara”. Which roughly translates into “Leave your wife’s shampoo. Use Head and Shoulders for Men and rediscover the man you once were. Only then will you be able to reclaim your life again”. The man immediately regains his confidence, buys the jeans and tells his wife it’s time to leave the store. Showing that real men nto only don’t care about whether their clothes fit them properly, they are also decisive.

That’s not all. There’s another ad in the gym. You see two men pumping iron and discussing their maid’s timings and how much she charges while a woman looks at them with disdain. The same sperminator shampoo zips into frame knocks them out and they’re instructed on how they can reclaim their lives. The closing shot is of them discussing how neither understands golf. Because real men not only don’t have maid problems, they also don’t play golf.

The third one called Head & Shoulders: Score Ya Bore has a man watching a Hindi TV serial with his wife and commenting on the actress’ outfit and behaviour in the show. His wife is looking on in shock. Again that empowering sperminator shampoo knocks him out. He then reclaims his life AND the remote and refuses to let his wife watch her soap and insists they watch cricket. Because that’s what real men do – hog the remote.

If you still think that these ads are spoofs, Head & Shoulders has gone the extra mile to explain they aren’t. This is the descriptor under each of these ads, posted by Head and Shoulders India on their official YouTube account. “The New Head&Shoulders Men is bringing the guys back – the fun loving, wave riding, crowd-pulling, adrenaline addicts who loved being men” – and who hate hyphens and punctuation. So why do our advertising geniuses keep mucking around like this? And since when did it become infra dig for men to be concerned about their looks or whether their dishes have been washed? Last I checked, a lot of the “real” men I know were extremely house proud, concerned about not being unfit and quite a few liked watching Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal. Maybe I should throw their wives’ shampoo bottles at their heads and watch them transform into super alpha men now. And my dear marketing gurus at Head and Shoulders and whatever puerile advertising agency you use, what is the logic of trashing women to sell your men’s product? You do remember that women are your main target audience for all your other products? Unless of course, it’s because they think we women are too bothered checking out the size of our posteriors in the mirror and then scrutinising Hindi soaps and hyper-ventilating over our maid’s timings to notice their astoundingly sexist ads.  Actually maybe I’m missing the woods for the misogyny. It could be that this is an ad about emancipation. Which is telling women that if they want to stay confident and interesting they should remain single. Because as you become a “wife” you become an idiot. Who knows? If I was to go by just advertising, and wanted to make women more useless as a demographic than advertisers anyway think we are – here’s what I’d do. Remove all the fairness products from the market AND make women wash their hair with only Head & Shoulders shampoo. If the presence of sodium lauryl detergents in your shampoo don’t make me stop buying your products, these ads certainly will. Take a bow.