“Waqt ke saath agar soch bhi badly jasakti hai, toh why not meri jaan?”
In a series of message-oriented advertisements under the “Why not meri jaan?” campaign, Pepsi released the following ad as encouragement towards female empowerment as it subtly remarks on our prevailing mentality of organizing gendered categories in our day to day lives.
It follows a boy, going around a café asking people whether the motor-bike out front is theirs and if he could move it so that he could park his car. What perhaps doesn’t stand out at first, and one is struck by later on, is that of the people lounging about in chairs, he only seems to be asking men. Upon my revisit to the ad, I found that he simply bypasses a table occupied by girls only to ask yet another man. Watching this ad for the first time, I was as surprised as he was when a girl from that very table rises and simply claims that the bike is hers. Confidently she puts her helmet on and sits astride her bike, driving off into the sunset.
The ad forces one to reexamine and rethink their mentality, seeking the neural pathways built on the basis of their personal biases. In less than a minute, this ad was able to showcase so many things that we simply take for-granted, especially when it comes to our expectations of what women can/can’t do in the confines of society. By showcasing this encounter, the ad simply yet efficiently brings forward this fact: women can do anything; it is our biases that tell us otherwise.