Madhuri Dixit recently received a notice from the Haridwar Food and Drug Administration for endorsing the nutritional value of Maggi, after the UP government found dangerously high levels of lead in a batch of noodles. While a debate rages about whether brand ambassadors can be held responsible for the quality of products, there is another side to the story. Kangana Ranaut reportedly turned down a Rs 2 crore deal to endorse a fairness cream. She did not have to investigate the quality of the product in question to know that endorsing it was wrong in a country where the obsession for fair skin is milked by unscrupulous brands and their greed driven ambassadors to sell the idea that men and women with dark skin are somehow not worthy of success, love and self-worth.
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In 2001, badminton legend Pullela Gopichand had rejected the brand endorsement offer from a cola company after he won the All England Badminton Championship. He called the decision, ”personal,” and said that since 1997, he had stopped drinking soft drinks. He was quoted as saying , ”you can call it ethics.”
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Be it a daily wage worker we employ to fix something around the house or the househelp or the roadside vegetable vendor, we expect value for money and expect to get what we were promised. We rue the lack of honesty, ethics and integrity in our daily interactions with people who are barely above the poverty line but we must not expect the same from folks who are paid crores to endorse stuff that may not be good for us?
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Like Gopichand had said, ”If heroes or role models appear often on television with these products, how can we blame children if they pester parents for buying them?” When a vendor sells not so fresh produce on a hot summer day, we can attribute it to a number of reasons but what do we attribute greed to, especially in those who already have everything? As the wife of a medical professional, does MsDixit not know that packaged food products should not be made a part of a child’s staple diet? Advertising guru Alyque Padamsee may say, that only a company’s word about a product’s safety and quality should be enough for a celebrity as they ”can’t go around being a scientist and finding if it’s true or not.” But when Ms Dixit and others of her ilk sell water purifiers or toothbrushes or anti-ageing creams or fairness potions or even washing powder, they are shown in labs, spouting scientific jargon supported by baffling graphics that may not have any scientific basis at all.
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They use the goodwill and clout they have earned with their cinematic work to sell us anything and everything and it is time to call them out. Be it Ajay Devgan celebrating 25 years of a paan masala, Shahrukh Khan attributing his success to Fair & Handsome or Hema Malini endorsing a water purifier with an RO system that is now being described as a ”serious threat to public health,’ or cricketers endorsing energy drinks and colas, we need to ask why folks who have earned so much wealth and success thanks to the adulation of the anonymous millions, think so little about their responsibility when it comes to something as simple as endorsing a product with little or no intrinsic value. How many of them consume paan masalas, feed their kids instant noodles, use fairness creams (high-end bleaching treatments are ofcourse in vogue for those who can afford them) and if none of these things are good enough for them, why are they good enough for us?
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It is hard to believe that Hindi cinema once had socially conscientious and politically aware actors like Balraj Sahni, poets like Kaifi Azmi who chose activism over wealth all their life and men like Dilip Kumar who stayed out of the endorsement rat race and still command respect. Some of the leading Hollywood stars are known as much for their activism as for their ability to sell tickets and it is sad that our leading stars see nothing wrong in dancing at a political leader’s lavish birthday party. Last year, when hundreds of refugee families were suffering in Muzaffarnagar, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav invited over two dozen artistes, including Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit to perform on the last day of a fortnight-long celebration. When the backlash came, the stars attributed their participation to ignorance. May be, it is time for our so called role models to reconsider the roles they are asked to play for a pay cheque. And to learn that ignorance may be lucrative in some instances but in the long run, it will dilute the only thing that is worth anything. Credibility.
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The New Indian Express Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and where she can write more books, paint, listen to music and just be silent with her cats.
I wonder why whenever I bought olive oil from the market for cooking, I never got it checked from a lab for adulteration, even when health of my family is at stake n I can very well afford it. Why I always rely on good brands n big departmental stores. Then how can we held madhuri dixit or amitabh bachan accountable endorsing maggi noodles, even if they come under packed food category, when all health authorities have given nod for permissible level of lead n monosodium glutamate commonly known n sold as agino moto.
If ms.dixit, as a wife of medical professional, must have known that packed food, which is approved by all health authorities of India, shd not made part of a child’s diet then why not educated parents who accompany their child to a Chinese restaurant, where there is uncontrolled use of these taste enhancers such as agino moto, held accountable for their child’s health.
if you are being paid in crores to endorse a product you would not feed your own child and put on your skin..then it maybe requires a rethink but then not everyone thinks beyond their own interests ..regards