MUMBAI: Reaffirming its position of being a tough fitness brand, Reebok India has launched an engaging social experiment on International Women’s Day that makes a compelling statement on societal insights. Being a proud women-first brand, with a rich combat training history, Reebok undertook a powerful experiment – Bruises can be good – that tapped into specific cultural and social conditioning to spark conversations to bring about a legislative change in the country.

According to the National Family Health Survey (NHFS-4), every third woman in India, since the age of 15, has faced domestic violence of various forms with 27 per cent women experiencing physical violence. Making a strong critique, the campaign unravels existing societal insights on violence and assault. 

Conducted in Mumbai with select participants across both genders, spanning age groups, the experiment invited them to observe a young woman, marred with bruises. The audience reaction varied from “must be some horrid accident”, “victim of domestic abuse” to “terrible outcome of eve teasing”. In a sudden movement, the bruised girl in the film stands up to perform a martial art move, surprising the audience and undoing their reactions to her bruised body. With a voice over, it is revealed that she is a combat athlete and that her bruises are “good” as they are a proof of her strength that enables her to defeat an opponent in combat. 

Highlighting that most of us perceive bruises and marks on women to be a result of violence, Reebok has made a petition on Change.org to make self-defense a mandatory part of school and college curricula for female students; Reebok wants to send this to the Ministry of Women and Child Development and is calling out to everyone to sign this petition. Reebok partnered with e-commerce portal Myntra to spread awareness about the cause and the petition that leads it. 
People can sign up for this petition at: http://www.bruisescanbegood.com/

Reebok India senior marketing director Silvia Tallon says, “Our idea behind the campaign was to showcase the skewed lens with which our society views bruises and women. The engrained perceptions of bruises being violence inflicted shadows the inner strength of the woman and allows us to undermine them. Since combat training is in our brand gene, Reebok honours these bruises as a mark of physical strength and mental toughness that can face any challenge.”