No Need For An Ultra Exclusive Product, Vim Puts Spotlight On Why Men Should Do More Housework

A seven-year-old refused the strawberry smoothie because it was pink, once poured into a Ben10 tumbler; however, it became his favourite drink. Gender stereotypes do exist and can be picked up from the surroundings, even when you are trying to keep them at bay.

For centuries grooms have been wearing black tuxedos at weddings, wondered why, when it is often considered the colour of mourning. But is it possible to turn this stereotyping on its head, so the joke is on you? Well, that is what the popular dishwash brand Vim has done.

Vim’s latest ad featuring Milind Soman has the entire internet talking about it. Soman shows off his bare arms and puts the focus on how men like to brag. In the ad, a young boy is seen bragging to a girl, while both are working out. He brags about how he helped his mother with the dishes last night, ending with a condescending “help to karni hi chahiye.” This satire is a deeper message about normalising a man's role in the kitchen. It is a step towards changing how we look at housework and how men working in the kitchen are nothing to “brag” about. Did it rub our “raja betas” the wrong way?

Vim Black: No Need For An Ultra Exclusive Product, Vim Puts Spotlight On Why Men Should Do More Housework

This takes me back to how our conditioning is so deep rooted that we at times need to state the obvious. A friend once shared how she gave her husband a big sturdy umbrella during the peak Mumbai monsoon, but he refused because it was red. The broken black one was reused because black is considered “brave, tough and warrior-like” even though he got soaked more often than not. Did his wife just need to paint the umbrella black for him to use? Is that all it would take? If that’s the case, the black bottle states an obvious conditioning we are marred with, as a society and boldly calls it out with an ad.

Is there a Vim Black bottle for sale in stores? Rather than talking about why men need to change, the ad puts the focus on the real issue.

No, Vim Black is not a real product. The packaging was simply changed to attract male audience. The black bottle was only a means to get attention and put the spotlight on how men need to take equal responsibility for household chores without making others (read women in the family) feel they are doing a “favour.” Household responsibilities in India are unequally distributed, and women take up the majority of them, irrespective of their professional achievements or economic conditions.

Some 84 per cent of women's working hours are spent on activities they do not get paid for, while for men, the reverse is true - 80 per cent of their work time is spent on activities they get paid for, as per the Time Use Surveys 2019-2020. While the two years of pandemic-induced lockdown did see many men approach household work from a different perspective. Sadly, as we opened up, men have also vanished from areas of the house which were traditionally female, namely the kitchen and laundry.

In such a scenario, isn't it a timely reminder to all those woke men that they do not need an aspirational, ultra exclusive men's only dishwash to do their share of the work at home? Or do you want to brag about how you are helpful only when we paint the container black? We need a colossal change for society to become equal, and sometimes smart campaigns like Vim's are a way to get the conversation going.

Article in partnership with Vim India