In a country where celebrities are being worshipped and adored by their fans, whatever they spit out gets keyed into by their audience. Many of them nowadays do not vet what they promote, they ignorantly contaminate the minds and mentality of their audience.
This afternoon, Nollywood actress Toyin Abraham shared a video of her advertisement for Fair Money, a microfinance bank in Nigeria, on her Instagram page of over 7.7million followers. However, the advert is highly insensitive and an insult to the Nigerian society.
In the advert, Toyin Abraham advised her audience to take a loan from Fair Money to fund their ‘baby girl lifestyle’ whenever they cannot afford to splash money on luxury fashion items.
The advert showed the actress talking about having four events, but has no cash available to finance the different looks she intends to rock for the events. Although she stated that her debtors are to pay her at a later date, which would be after the events.
There is nothing wrong with living an extravagant lifestyle, if you can afford it. What is wrong is doing the unimaginable, like taking a loan to fund the lifestyle just because you want to be seen as classy and get validations from certain people — if this isn’t what a misplaced priority is, then it is absolutely dumb!
For the advert, there are other approaches that could have been used to get people to take loans, such as taking a loan to finance a business, applying for a loan for investment, to learn a new trade or educational purposes that would add better value and yield even more.
It is understandable that some people get emotional whenever they get compliments and attention for looking good, however, not like being in debt to look good when you can improvise with what you already have. Also, taking a loan for hair, makeup, dresses and other unsustainable items in the name of living a ‘baby girl lifestyle’ is definitely not a wise move.
What is the baby girl lifestyle? A baby girl lifestyle is an illusion created by social media influencers. They claim they are living their best lives by regularly travelling to different destinations, attending different events and parties, wearing exotic items, looking all glamorous, living in expensive houses, driving luxury automobiles and sharing them on social media for others to see.
All they do is share posts of them enjoying from time to time, however, someone is working to pay for that lifestyle they live.
Frankly, no woman who works hard for her money, values and respects money will be out lavishing money every single day. There is no such thing as baby girl lifestyle for adults, except for the actual baby girls.
Watch Toyin Abraham’s advert for Fair Money below;
Opinion writer: Adeyinka Oluwamayowa