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Journalism of Courage
Feminists around the world have long criticised the institution of marriage as a patriarchal practice that disproportionately serves men. Now a public service advertisement, reportedly made by Iran’s conservative culture center, that reinforces this criticism, is going viral.
The ad compares the life of a single man with that of a married man. While the right side of the ad depicts a bachelor leading a lonely life and sustaining on take-out food, the left side shows him being served home-cooked meals and leading a more fulling life that entails surprise birthday parties.
Reza H. Akbari (@rezahakbari), who as per his Twitter bio works as a program manager in the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, shared this ad on January 22 and wrote, “An ad for married life produced by a conservative cultural center in #Iran.” So far this video gathered over two million views.
In the comments, many people pointed out that the video only centres around men and shows how they benefit from marriage while negating the emotional and domestic labour done by women.
Echoing this sentiment, a Twitter user wrote, “Conservatives be like: Men are rational leaders and responsible for everything. Also conservatives: wah, we can’t cook or dress ourselves and need a woman to do everything for us. But we’re definitely not giant babies.”
Another person remarked, “The narrative has always been that “unmarried women will grow into old, crazy cat ladies,” meanwhile if men don’t get married they won’t have someone around to cook or clean for them and will fall into depression as a result”.
