It has been 75 years since Lux soap was first manufactured in India. To mark the occasion, Hindustan Lever is making its first ad for Lux staring a male Bollywood actor. In it they present Shah Rukh Khan in a bathtub full of rose petals. Equal opportunity objectification for men is beginning; you’ve come a long way baby!

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p>It seems that the actor had long wanted to star in a Lux ad:

A spokesman for Hindustan Lever, the Indian arm of the multinational Unilever, said the firm had learnt of Shah Rukh Khan’s desire to star in a Lux commercial, following in the footsteps of actresses Hema Malini, Juhi Chawla, Madhuri Dixit, Kareena Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai.

“Our advertising agency somehow managed to hear that Shah Rukh had told his co-stars Juhi Chawla and Hema Malini while shooting for a movie that they are the real stars as they get to sit in elaborate bathtubs and advertise for Lux,” the spokesman, Paresh Chowdhury, told the BBC. [BBC]

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p>And of course, a sudsy SRK made perfect sense for the manufacturer as well: Will desi men start threading their chest hair to emulate SRK?

“The target audience, which is basically women between six and 60, love him because he comes across as vulnerable,” he told the BBC. “You could have had some macho actor get in tub but he would seem unreal.

“Shah Rukh Khan is a man with a very strong female side – he is not ashamed of not having any hair on his chest – yet he is a man’s man.” [BBC]

Is Shah Rukh Khan the metrosexual desi man for the next century or just a passing fad? Will desi men start threading their chest hair to emulate SRK? One thing is for certain, Indian TV will never be the same again.

UPDATES: These ads will be shown worldwide, and place SRK in the footsteps of Paul Newman:

Khan is the first Indian actor to sign on as the global ambassador for Lux soap, marketed in the South Asian country as the beauty soap of movie stars, said Hindustan Lever Ltd., the Indian arm of multinational Unilever Limited, which makes the soap.

The Indian star follows in the footsteps of Hollywood legend Paul Newman, who was the first male actor to endorse the brand, Hindustan Lever said. NewmanÂ’s ads appeared in the West, not India.

Responding to news that he was following Newman’s lead, Khan told The Hindustan Times newspaper: “But I’m sure he wasn’t in a tub of water with rose petals around him.” [cite]

Also, some commentary about how radical this advertisement actually is:

Although a minor storm of excitement has been whipped up over Khan in the ads, doubtless by Lux’s marketing division, television commercials which depict men in a sexually provocative way are not new in India. In fact, Khan, bare-chested in a bath with petals, is pretty tame. One advert showing now in India features a roll call in a school sixth-form. The teacher calls the name of a particularly attractive boy, and the girls shout, “Yes sir! Yes! Yes!” as if mimicking cries of orgasm. The advert, strangely, is for wristwatches. [cite]