Fashion e-tailer Myntra has made slight changes to its logo following a complaint by Naaz Patel, a Mumbai-based activist who alleged that the brand's signage was offensive towards women. Patel, who works at the Avesta Foundation NGO, filed the complaint with the Mumbai Police's Cyber Crime department. She filed the complaint in December 2020, demanding the removal of the logo and calling for action to be taken against the company. Patel alleged that the old logo resembled a naked woman. She also took this up with various forums on the Internet. In her complaint, Patel says “the deliberate placement of the colour scheme” of the letter “M” in the logo is “obscene” as it depicts a “woman’s vagina … [with her] legs spread out in a suggestive manner”.
She adds that this portrayal would “corrupt the mind of the viewers and even excite them” and “lead to further victimisation of women in our society”.
Mumbai Police’s Cyber Crime department sent an e-mail to Myntra, informing the company about the complaint.
Avesta Foundation in a tweet said: “Congratulations to our founder. She did it what apparently seemed impossible. Thank you everyone for your support. We're overwhelmed by the response. Kudos to @myntra for addressing the concerns and respecting the sentiments of millions of women”.
Founded in 2007, Myntra was acquired by Flipkart in 2014. The company later acquired fashion e-retailer Jabong in 2016. It has since grown to become one of the country’s largest online fashion websites.
While the complaint has succeeded in forcing the e-commerce website to change its logo, many are left scratching their heads wondering how the letter "M" resembles a "naked woman”, sparking a debate on the social media. While some have welcomed Myntra's decision, several netizens took to Twitter to make fun of Myntra's decision to change the logo.
Without taking names, Milind Soman wrote that the letter ‘M’ will never be the same anymore. Netizens, who understood the reference, added that even ‘W’ would face a similar situation now. A netizen pointed out that Airbnb ought to change their logo, while another, taking a dig at Google’s Gmail logo, said Google would have to change theirs too. A Twitter user wrote, “If #MyntraLogo is changing then Doordarshan also needs to change its logo, it looks like "69”.
