At a time when the fight is to end colourism in beauty products and their advertisements, a men’s grooming company has adopted a disgusting, sexist, and outright regressive advertisement campaign that should have never been thought of in the first place, let alone executed.
Qraa Men, a men’s grooming products company, recently launched an advertisement campaign that blatantly sexualizes women to sell their products.
Text strips strategically placed across nude female models are a cheap, disgusting ploy to attract attention. And messages like “mard ban, beard grow kar” propagate a terribly flawed sense of beauty and ‘masculinity’.
Naturally, people have been calling out the offensive advertisement on social media.
However, a quick glance at the company’s Instagram page shows that this is not a one-off, misguided campaign.
Qraa’s entire communication model is based on treating women as objects and promoting the ‘na mein haan‘ ideology used by Bollywood to normalize stalking/force consent.
They’ve also normalized infidelity, going so far as to promote Qraa as the product for men who cheat, while continuously playing on men and their inferiority complex.
Much like women are ridiculed and judged for excessive hair, dark skin etc., men too are judged for their inability to grow a beard, for being ‘too sensitive’, etc. And Qraa plays on all these insecurities, while continuously displaying photos of women in swimwear, or provocative positions.
It’s truly disheartening that even in today’s day and age, there is a need to reiterate these messages, but beards are not ‘magic potion’ that guarantee sex. Consent and sexual preferences are not ideas to be mocked. Women are not objects that help you sell products. And such regressive, sexist advertisements have NO place in society.
All images are screenshots from the Instagram page of Qraa Men.