Uttar Pradesh’s Prachi Nigam hogged headlines as she scored 98.5 per cent in the Class 10 board exams. However, Nigam’s achievement overshadowed her physical appearance. She fell prey to trolls mocking her facial hair. Amid the ongoing outrage on social media, Bombay Shaving Company published an advertisement on Nigam, which did not go well with the internet.
Shantanu Deshpande, founder and CEO of the grooming brand, shared a picture of the newspaper advertisement that read, “Dear Prachi, They are trolling your hair today, they’ll applaud your A.I.R. tomorrow.” Sharing the picture, Deshpande wrote, “It was shocking to see the amount of hate targeted at a teenage girl who had TOPPED AN EXAM because of her facial hair. Our simple message to this amazing young woman with such a bright future. Love to see my team ooze class. No opportunistic sale, QR code, nothing. Just a heartfelt message to a fellow Bae.”
Deshpande’s post backfired with users slamming him for “opportunistic” marketing. Reacting to it, a user commented, “Hey Shantanu, this is absolutely absurd. Nothing cool about this ad and it’s so unfortunate that even companies with repute doesn’t want to leave a chance of leveraging an unfortunate incident. Supporting the cause I pledge to never buy a product of your company. Bombay Shaving Company,” along with a #boycott. Another user wrote, “This is so disgusting. Definitely NO CLASS. Definitely OPPORTUNISTIC (and not having a QR code is NO BIG DEAL). This angers me so much.”
“First things to shave off… Your audacity and entitlement in the final line,” a third user commented.
Nigam, after being trolled mercilessly, became a point of conversation. She addressed the trolls and shut them down. In an interview with BBC, Nigam said she has been subjected to such comments for a long time and doesn’t care much about the situation. “People see girls with hair and feel weird about it because they have not seen this before,” she told BBC.
