Remember that absurd ad for the vaginal whitening cream launched in India in April 2012? At first I thought the clip below was a parody. I soon realized, to my horror, that this was a bonafide ad for another product: a vaginal tightening gel called “18 Again”. The louts behind this insidious marketing campaign—including one Priti Nair in a leadership role at an outfit called Curry Nation—say this gel’s “product positioning from a brand perspective is that of women empowerment”. Surreal, no? The product, made by Ultratech India, was apparently launched in Aug 2012 (I only saw this today) and attracted a fair bit of bad press, twitter venting, and scientific debunking of its claims back then.