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Flipkart made a big boo-boo when it sent women customers a sexist email telling them why looking good was important for success. It got pilloried in social media – and rightly so – for perhaps getting a bit too close to the truth.
This is the text of the email it sent to potential customers. “Research shows that beautiful women are more successful in their lives. This is because when women improve their appearances, they get noticed, listened to and eventually respected for their opinion. Such women not only become confident but also remain motivated to perform even better in life.”
Every sentence in this email is fairly close to the truth, but that may be one reason why it is so offensive. Especially for women in a patriarchal world where they have been told that their whole goal in life should be to look good – and nothing else. And where they needed to get pretty if they wanted to get anywhere.
Though Flipkart has since apologised for this faux pas, it is worth analysing why the truth can be offensive, and what is the bit that really offends.
The worst bit was this phrase which implied that they will be respected only after they have gotten their beauty act together first. The sentence says "when women improve their appearances, they get noticed, listened to and eventually respected for their opinion." (italics mine). This hurts. Women know that it takes a lot to get respected, and to be reminded that they have to do lots of things and only "eventually" get respect, it is downright insensitive.
It can be no one’s case that looking good does not help. Many, many studies have proved that a good looking person gets a better deal – in jobs and promotions, in terms of dates or marriage partners, and even in criminal cases where juries are known to treat a good looker less harshly than someone with lower endowments in this department.
It cannot also be anyone’s case that looking good does help self-confidence, and one feels good (or not so good) about oneself depending on where one rates oneself on a scale of 0-10 in the good looks scale. If this were not so, the beauty industry would not be that big everywhere, nor would beauty parlours and skin whitening creams be lucrative businesses.
In fact, the truth of this is obvious from the fact that the good looks obsession is now rapidly spreading to men. Men’s cosmetics and parlours are growing faster than products aimed at women.
The truth is no guarantee of inoffensiveness in this case for a simple reason: by talking down to women on the importance of beauty – something they have never needed to be educated on – Flipkart merely reminded women that patriarchy is very much alive, and even now beauty is the only thing women will be assessed on.
Secondly, the ad talked directly about women directly - and not just about the importance of looking good in general. A gender-neutral message would probably have been less offensive.
Third, the ad also made the big mistake of presuming - and emphasising - that looks are the main route to success. No one, women included, likes to believe that success depends on just one attribute – something that you may just have been blessed with rather than something you deserve or have worked hard for. Even if good looks have been important in a person’s success, no one likes to be told this. Everybody likes to believe that he or she has special competencies unique to them; it's not merely the result of expensive facials or a stroke of genetic good luck.
Flipkart flouted all the laws of effective communication even while staying within the realm of truth. Some truths hit too close to the bone. This is why its pitch sucked.
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