From bathrooms to autos, there’s no escaping advertisements anywhere. But that’s not the annoying bit at all. The annoying part starts when they start showing women do absolutely ridiculous, unrealistic, and straight up silly things. For instance, which woman makes it her life’s mission to educate her whole mohalla about the amazing detergent she’s using? No one!

So advertisers, if you’re listening, here are some things you got to stop doing about, right now:

1. Wearing light-coloured bottoms on periods

When we’re on our periods, every light-coloured clothing in our wardrobe gets shoved into the deepest abyss. It only sees daylight once the 5-day ordeal is done and dusted. 

2. Running everywhere just because the pad has wings! 

Come on, now! No one does that. When we are on our periods, we don’t move much at all. I mean, do you even know how difficult it is to find the perfect position to sit while every part of your body hurts? It’s not an easy feat, boss. 

3. Waxing hairless body parts

Watch this:

Where’s the hair, yaar?  We get that you’re trying to sell your product by showing how smooth your skin would be if we use your brand. But guess what, shaving does not even remotely look like that. If you really want to sell your product, why don’t you take a normal girl and see what waxing a full month’s growth looks like? 

4. Throwing water on the face

Look at this image. 

Matlab why would anyone in their right mind wash their face like that? It’s not only silly, but it isn’t going to help you achieve the desired result either. Plus, there’s going to be water everywhere. Your aunty’s going to clean that up or what? 

5. Closing your eyes and eating chocolate or ice cream

After a long day at work, if we plan to eat ice cream, it’s going to be straight from the tub. And it ain’t happening in slow-mo for sure. We’re going to gorge on it and eat ravenously. 

6. Raising your arms for everything and anything after applying deodorant 

Guys, calm your pits! It’s just a deodorant. There’s nothing magical about it. I mean I get you have nice, clean underarms, but you don’t have to wear a sleeveless dress, and keep raising your arms to show it off. Because women in real life don’t do that. 

7. Applying body lotion and making it a self-loving exercise

We get it. You want to show that people who apply lotion love their skin. Guess what? We love our skin too. Smooth or not, hydrated or not, we believe in loving ourselves just as we are. And honestly, no one applies lotion like that in real life. 

8. Dancing, laughing, frolicking in the shower

Seriously? No woman enjoys having a shower as much as you show in your ads. And if they are as lazy as I am, they’ll barely be smiling standing under the shower when they are already late to work.

9. Tugging hair to show how strong it is

We can’t wrap it around our fingers without breaking a few strands, leave alone tugging it. Of course we take care of our hair, but not at the cost of showing its iron-like strength to people. Who does that anyway? 

10. Breathing heavily after smelling a man’s deodorant 

Nope. Nahi. Nah. As much as they would have you believe it, we don’t lose our breath when we smell your dope deodorant. Plus, most men I know either use Axe or Nivea. So, you see, there’s nothing particularly different to heave my breasts and make my dupatta fall. 

I’m pretty sure there are millions of other things advertisers do that either sexualize women or put them into a concrete stereotype. 

But we’re trying to break-free and this is Step 1.