When pink papers turn pretty

With high profile annual contests to pick annual winners seeming to run right through the year, it should be no surprise that cashing in o...

With high profile annual contests to pick annual winners seeming to run right through the year, it should be no surprise that cashing in on our beauty assets has caught the fancy of hard-nosed operators. Crafty beauty business marketers riding this bandwagon seem willing and able to go all the way to capture the glory.

An ad appearing on January 20 in a mainstream newspaper that sponsors beauty contests celebrates the success of six sweet things in various categories of the looking good and acting good facets of our one and only Femina Miss India Contest. Oops! I err: The title rights having been sold, signed and delivered to a very willing sponsor. The contest is now labelled: Fa Femina Miss India. In case you missed the connection Fa is the brand name for a range of 8216;personality8217; enhancing toilet products such as soaps, talcs, deodorants8230;

The Fa Femina ad has on display a picture gallery of, now hold on tight to whatever you can, Rosy Fa Miss 10, Debali Mont Blanc Miss Photogenic, Flavia Fa Miss Personality, Megha Mont Blanc Miss Talented, Trisha Neem Active Miss Beautiful Smile, Celina Margo Miss Skin! Just to set your mind at rest that every Miss owner has legit rights, Mont Blanc is the co-sponsor, and, Neem and Margo venerable brands that once belonged to Calcutta Chemicals now belong to Fa. The headline of this work of beauty leaves me at a loss for words as does the sign off slogan. The former reads When stories are scripted in syllables of beauty, Femina abandons words8217;.

However, the copywriter is not one to be easily deterred and he goes on to script a 50-word paean of praise. Carried away by the charm of the pretty Misses he signs off the ad with the pun of the year: The Gaitway of India8217;. Seemingly unable to contain himself our copy guy pens yet another Femina ad, which appears in the same newspaper two days later, where he suggests we call these sweeties, Global Goddess or Bharatiya Belle. Ugh!

After this diversion let me get back to the main reason for this piece: The surprising entry of cheesecake into the hallowed pages of one of our leading economic dailies. Is this a question of proximity breeding who knows what? Anyway, I noticed, and perhaps you did too, the first case of this affliction on January 8, 2001. A front page story on Sebi and the possibility of companies having to send their entire prospectus to investors was headlined with the titillating sentence: Corporate India may be asked to bare it all.8217;

Faithful to the tone of this line, an inset photo rubs the point in: a barely clad, sexy young thing catwalking somewhere or other is supported by the photo caption: Time for total disclosure8217;. Making certain that this was not a one-time deviation, on January 13 we are entertained with another cheesecake illustration for an article innocently headlined, Mukand on cost-cutting spree, 205 line up for VRS8217;. The picture is of a young miss busy making up her face clad in a scanty bra and panties. The caption: Shedding flab to stay in shape8217;.

Wonder how our trade unionist friends will respond to this interpretation of downsizing. Maybe, they will come round to agreeing that a more appropriate and acceptable description is rightsizing, or, dare I say it, stripping?