The government can sit on their heinies as far as repealing section 377 on homosexuality is concerned, but the ad industry has stepped forward to say that Indians are ready to mainstream LGBT communities.
India’s first ever advertisement showing lesbians was posted recently by Myntra. This delightful ad film of their ‘Bold is Beautiful series’, called ‘The Visit’ is neither preachy, apologetic nor inappropriate. The online video shows two women in a live-in relationship, who are flirting while dressing up to meet their parents.
The video steers clear of any kind of stereotypes, like the tendency to portray a dom and submissive while depicting LGBTs. The two girls just have a casual chat about their expectations, the nervousness is palpable. The intimacy is easily evident in their comfort around each other, even from the fact that they borrow each other’s clothes and accessories. Not surprisingly, the ad video got over 2 lakh hits on Youtube in 10 days.
“We tried to avoid the stereotypes associated with gay people. There was no one woman looking more masculine or feminine in the film. We tried to give it a candid feel like it is any other couple being apprehensive about meeting the parents,” Avishek Ghosh, co-partner of Hectic Content told The Times of India. Hectic Content, incidentally, is the production house that made the film conceptualized by ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, Bangalore.
“The ad has got 3 million views across social media like Facebook, YouTube etc,” Manish Aggarwal, VP (marketing) at Myntra Fashion told TOI.
In the last few years, we have seen other ads too that hint at homosexuality. Hindustan Times came up with a video commercial about its newspaper that took on homosexuality. Later Fastrack also came up with a commercial featuring a lesbian encounter as a part of its quirky series of ‘Move On’ ads. This too was released on national television.
The best evidence of change in mindset, was the comments section to the Myntra video. None of the top comments show any haters or lewd comments. Everybody is all praises for the video. Truly India is progressing.
Click to watch the video below.
More on>> Balancing Act
