BENGALURU: The Bad Girl poster meme that went viral recently was created by four students of a design school in Bengaluru, who had wanted to underscore the absurdity of some of the ideas behind the perception of bad girls. The creators of the viral posters drew not just from their own experiences, but also from ideas that are not in tune with the times.
The poster had been designed as part of an assigned college project Shristhi School of Design in Bengaluru, by Roshan Shakeel, Sparsh Saxena, Jaiwant Pradhan and Stuti Kothari. It had also later spawned an anonymous Bad Boy poster meme.
“It was a school project for a vernacular culture class and we were given a list of topics and we had to choose one of them. We thought this would be fun,” said Sparsh Saxena, one of the creators of the poster, adding, “We had to mimic educational posters so we were shown a couple of ideal educational posters like ‘The Ideal Boy’ and then we were provided with a list of topics and we thought this would be like fun to illustrate and fun to work with.”
When asked if his role in the creation of the satirical poster made him a feminist, Furqan Jawed said, “If I had to define a feminist, for me it would be just someone who believes in gender equalities. So if that’s the definition I want to go by, I’d call myself a feminist.”
The foursome say they drew on their own experiences and observations, and kept jotting the ideas down before shortisting the ones they thought were more in sync with the times. That was among the considerations that was behind the choice of the illustration that claimed that bad girls ‘go to Goa’.
Some of the illustrations however were favourites for the creators. Jaiwant Pradhan felt the most ridiculous item was ‘has breasts’. “Because, you know, it’s not upto a girl you know. Just having those things – is a bad thing for her, like, the way she’s looked at,” he said.
There were people who took the poster seriously and were offended. “Some of them got really offended and some of them liked the idea. But it was quite funny if people got offended. All those agitated messages on social media platforms… But we just tried to tell them that it was a satire piece,” said Sparsh Saxena.
The back of the poster has a list of ‘What a bad girl possesses.’ The list included lipstick, a push-up bra, cigarettes, heels, a pregnancy test, beer, condoms, iPhone and short skirts.
