I had to stop working on my homework assignment and immediately pen this rant as soon as I saw this phenomenal ad. You might not completely agree with me and I’m not even sure you’ll understand what the brand is trying to say through this commercial but the rebel in me got excited.

This commercial for Crocker Jeans shows Erika Linder, an androgynous model, as Him and Her. The tagline of the campaign is “Whatever.”

Check it out:

I don’t know what it really meant, to be very honest with you but the very thought of not being confined by our genders is intensely gratifying and liberating. Everything around us is more or less created or defined by our stereotypical gender roles. In this age where women are finding an equal foothold is various arenas of business and culture and men are re-defining their purpose and roles in different spheres of life, an ad like this reminds us that we don’t have to be defined by our genders.

The best relationships that I’ve had were ones in which I never bothered about the gender of the opposite person. You’re a girl? You’re a boy? It doesn’t matter. Do you have a head above your shoulders? Do you have a soul in that consolidated mass of cells? Yes. That does matter.

More often than not, being a woman I have made certain deliberate decisions which maybe I wouldn’t have made if I were a man. And I’m not confused about my gender but I didn’t ever want my sex to be an excuse for not making tough decisions. I didn’t ever want to think that I’m a girl, I should take it easy. That excuse is for sissies. Ha! See what I mean. We are constantly confined in this vicious cycle of stereotypes and don’t you think that limits our potential as human beings in some way?

Maybe, this is the young blood in me urging me to talk like this. Maybe, a decade from now I’ll be sitting in a rocking chair nursing my baby and I might just be the worst kind of hypocrites you might have met but I like knowing that I have the freedom to think like this. I can look back at myself and at least know that I was or am a woman who didn’t hold herself back.

Not too long ago, I was having this discussion with a friend about how most of the popular figures that have pervaded the public memory through time were predominantly men. Philosophers, artists, politicians, dictators (not that I would want a woman to be a dictator), businessmen and so on… of course there are exceptions and when I debate this issue there are a certain handful of names that I do call out but then I have to rest my case. There are several TEDx talks on this or some form of this issue. And, I don’t want to know why this ratio of change-makers is so skewed towards men. You can rationalise it in a million ways but I’m not here to do that.

I just want us to look at ourselves as human beings, people, minds, souls or whatever you would want to call it. I want us to be aware that we are so much more than what these forced definitions tell us that we are.

Androgyny…

Androgyny to me is not a man wearing women’s clothing or a woman wearing men’s clothing; nor is it about a girl being a “tom boy” or a guy being “effeminate”. Androgyny to me is being the person that I am meant to be and breaking that cage of gender specificity that I was born in to.

Androgyny… Whatever.