Gaysi: The Gay Desi - Yes, we're legal!

Zilch is my faith in the Indian Main Stream Media. Be it their Breaking News claims, Current Affairs, Political Opinions, Reviews; anything and everything that is highlighted by them I refuse to buy it. In today’s competitive scenario, by default they all seem to follow single shameless funda – TRP (Circulation) ke liye kuch bhi karega – and therefore lies and exaggeration form a crucial element of the daily news bundle.

But once in a while we have a blue moon night (Yes! Yes! We are grateful) where a thing called “conscious” awakens and makes its presence felt. What? Where? You ask…

Folks at Hindustan Times have started a new series of Ad campaigns, pretty much on the lines of “Jaago India” types introduced by Tata Tea guys.

One of the Ad campaign focuses on Gay Rights. Agreed its self-promotion harping business but as long as it sends out the right message, it’s all good, me thinks.

Hopefully now HT will do more than just preaching and not let it all breeze by as wishful thinking. Or else we will continue to use their newspaper as a cheap mosquito repellant. What say you?

A reader’s reply to yesterday’s published post.

It is shocking to see the number of advertisements floating around these days which portray women as desired objects and man as consumer, directly or in-directly. According to these advertisements the Man is the hunter, woman the hunted. Man the voyeur, woman the victim. At times some of these women advertisements are so over the top, that it makes it hard for the whole family to sit together and watch television. And sadly, there is no one to question the present market-and-media ethics that turns women’s bodies into consumer objects?

I don’t agree with that because there are plenty of new advertisements that work the other way. Look at Carl Zeiss ads, AXE ads, Kamasutra (get unbuttoned) ads. Each of these portray men as the objects that need to use the products in question to attract women. The last one in particular showed a lot of men in unbuttoned shirts with perfect bodies going about their daily chores. If anything, I take objection to fairness creams that insist that only fair skin can produce success at the work place and attract men’s attention. But that is a problem with the product itself.

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