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The advertisement read, “Match for opinionated feminist. 30+ educated girl, short hair, piercings, works in social sector agnst cap’lism. Wanted h’some, well built, strictly 25-28 yr old only son with estd business, bungalow/atleast 20 acre farm house. Should know cooking. No farters/burpers plz. Write to curbyourpatriarchy@gmail.com.”
Comedienne Aditi Mittal shared it on Twitter asking if someone had put it out for her.
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BBC reached out to the email address mentioned in the ad (curbyourpatriarchy@gmail.com) and managed to track down the “opinionated feminist” – a woman who does not want to reveal her real name, instead used the pseudonym Sakshi. The report revealed that the wedding ad evolved from a prank between Sakshi, her brother Srijan and her best friend Damyanti (also not their real names).
Srijan said, “It was a small prank we played for Sakshi’s 30th birthday.”
He further said, “Turning 30 is a milestone, especially because of all the conversation in our society around marriage. As you turn 30, your family and society start putting pressure on you to get married and settle down.”
Srijan told BBC, “The ad appeared in a dozen northern Indian cities and cost about 13,000 rupees – “an amount we would have spent on presents and celebrations if there was no Covid lockdown.”
The night before Sakshi’s birthday, her brother gifted her a scroll with only the email address that would later appear in the matrimonial.
“When I unrolled it, it had the email address – curbyourpatriarchy@gmail.com – and the password. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with that. “In the morning, Srijan brought me a copy of the newspaper with the page opened to the matrimonial columns and we had a good laugh. It was a fun prank,” Sakshi told BBC.
Sakshi says she received a number of abusive emails.
She said that she was called a “gold-digger”, a “cougar” and “toxic”, among other things. One woman threatened that her brother would “throw her off the 78th floor”, while another person wrote “all feminists are idiots”.
Sakshi said the ad “seemed to have hurt a lot of egos”.
She asserted , “was a satirical statement on this narrative and I assume that the people getting triggered are the same as those who put out these kinds of ‘slim, fair, beautiful bride wanted’ type of ads in the first place”.