They appear as objects of titillation, if not the mother of sacrifices. When the director wants to be adventurous, they are also able to stride deep in muck and together push an ambulance out of mud while the males just gaze at them gratefully. But no, it’s not women’s physical strength and the innate social responsibility of helping which is being projected. It’s that pristine washing powder which Rekha, Jaya and Sushma turn to, once they are done releasing the ambulance from the dirty, dirty muck.
The role of women in advertising is a no-brainer. Oomph and sex sells as does the mother, sister and daughter image that reeks of goodness and sacrifice in the Indian advertising. Now, the Indian advertising fraternity has decided that this needs to change. And yet, change is not going to be easy. Barring the most blatant, each advertisement can be interpreted differently. Good mother or meek mother? Understanding wife or victimised wife? Perceptions differ. What may be sauce for goose need not be sauce for gander in Indian advertisements. Take this one for example.
A regular urban family – a working husband, a loving wife who makes it a point to keep him company for dinner every night, and a small kid in the background. That day, the couple is at the dining table when the wife confesses that earlier in the day, she accidentally broke his trophy.
The husband freezes. “What do you mean you broke it?” he asks in disbelief. It was one of the trophies from his school-days. Clearly, he attaches a lot of nostalgic value to it. “Do I ever touch your stuff?” he demands. He can’t stand the sight of his wife any more, one whose pulao he was singing praises of only moments ago, and storms out.
We are in the middle of an advertisement of a packaged milk brand. Called ‘Mother Dairy’, the accused, the mother, walks over to the real culprit – her son. He has been witnessing the altercation from his hiding spot. She quietly instructs him not to play cricket in the house any more. “Our mothers go to such lengths for us,” says the voiceover as the santoor trills in the background, “let’s drink milk and stay healthy, so that we too can take care of them one day.”
What appeared innocent at the first sight raised a hue and cry at a recent gender sensitisation seminar held in Mumbai by the India chapter of the International Advertising Association. Criticisms were hurled back and forth and suddenly, the reliable mother-son equation was also a potential case of domestic violence. “Subordination of women,” said one, “reinforcing stereotypes,” said another. A few minutes later, the advertisement was sexist, promoted patriarchy and had a takeaway that women need looking after, that you can do your bit one glass at a time.
One of the well-known anecdotes by advertising graduates talks about a professor who walked into class on the first day of the semester and announced, “Today on, we are going to teach you how to lie with confidence.” The account might be taking it a bit too far but doesn’t discount the fact that advertisers morph reality by liberal use of the creative license. But when they take recourse to being cute or glamorising sociopaths, they raise hackles.
Take the deodorant advertisements and their singular message – the way to a woman’s heart is through your armpit. While women have always been shown turning into nymphomaniacs at a mere whiff, a recent advertisement by the deodorant brand ‘Zatak’ pushed it too far, thinks Sangeetha N, executive creative director in the advertising agency R K Swamy. “The bride waiting for her husband in her bedroom starts undressing herself in front of the guy next door when she smells his scent. It sends a clear message that women are available,” she says.
For some, exaggeration isn’t as much as a problem as showing regressive hierarchy of sexes. Charged guilty under this section is a recent campaign ‘Soldiers for Women’ by the men’s grooming brand Gillette. The copy reads ‘When you respect women, you respect your nation’, and the first step to it is probably is giving up your stubble, since none of the models seem to have any.
For some, exaggeration isn’t as much as a problem as showing regressive hierarchy of sexes. Charged guilty under this section is a recent campaign ‘Soldiers for Women’ by the men’s grooming brand Gillette. The copy reads ‘When you respect women, you respect your nation’, and the first step to it is probably is giving up your stubble, since none of the models seem to have any.
“The advertisement is all about patriarchy. Safety is my basic right. Why do I need protectors and defenders and ‘soldiers’, who come with the connotation of violence?” asks Geeta Rao, creative director of Geeta’s List agency.
But then, advertisers are no activists. It’s the entertainment quotient that makes one race the water that has just been unleashed down the dam only to recover a soda bottle. And if deodorants were all love potions one needed, who would go to all the quacks promising Romeos the girl of their dreams in every local train poster?
“Say I decide to stick to all the sensibilities. Then I’ll have feminists asking for ‘better representation’, anti-nicotine lobby asking for no cigarettes, traffic police for helmets, no stunts due to ‘impressionable minds’, no use of children due to child labour regulations, I won’t be able to show animals on grounds of cruelty, environmentalists trying to push their cause… There will be so many can’t-dos that you will end up stifling all imagination,” says K V Sridhar, creative director from the agency Leo Burnett. “Clients don’t set out with an agenda of making an ad offensive. It is people who sometimes view things with a magnifying glass,” he adds.
At the end of the day, we are a nation with a popular perception that the only way to make oneself count is by getting at least one media product banned every year, be it a novel, film, cartoon, website, public intellectual or a CPI(M) sympathizer. So what is the way out when my portrayal of a homemaker is your version of a housewife?
At the end of the day, we are a nation with a popular perception that the only way to make oneself count is by getting at least one media product banned every year, be it a novel, film, cartoon, website, public intellectual or a CPI(M) sympathizer. So what is the way out when my portrayal of a homemaker is your version of a housewife?
“What needs to be done is going beyond the conventional wisdom. In fairness cream ads, a fair guy gets all the girls but a fair girl only gets a husband. It’s the nuances that make the difference. How about we have a morning cereal pack being opened by a man, for a change? Let’s have less stereotypes and more entertainment,” says Rao.
