Pardon me if I don’t know too well the ways of men and their minds. I like to believe though that I know them fairly well, even one of those mindless Facebook quizzes I took said so! But it is somehow beyond me why men would want a woman in the vicinity of everything they would want to buy.

I am trying to draw up a list here, a very rudimentary one, very off-the-top-of-my-head. Cars and stylish bikes – half naked women draped around them. I can give myself a reason—women, or rather girls, purportedly go out with boys with both or at least one of these. Shaving blades/creams/lotions–I am stretching my imagination here—maybe because women wouldn’t want their dates to look like ruffians with a daylong stubble. Magazines—this is the easy one—nothing else but women looking seductive would probably prompt them to buy those.  And here is the clincher: underwear. Come on now!

The ad agency guys were really serious on this one? I kind of “get” men, but these advertisements have me baffled!

I stopped watching television long ago, about the time over enthusiastic reporters began screaming into the mike—and to the nation—about the breaking news of some starlet breaking up with whatever-was-his-name. But from the long, long ago times when I did watch them channels, I still distinctly remember the Rupa undergarments ad. There is this group of men, desperately trying to look menacing and attacking a girl (I think her dress was red.) Our hero is looking down from a balcony and sees his girl being harassed. He jumps from the balcony, a few dishum-dishums later, he is the hero again and our girl is nestled in his arms. The undergarments figure too, the hero is wearing them when he jumps down from the balcony; those are what give him the courage! I could break into giggles right now at the thought of how ridiculous it was. I am told advertisers look for brand recall and ad recognition when they shoot an ad. If that was all they wanted, I fully recall the brand after all these years, but for reasons other than those intended.

Then again, do you remember that other underwear ad where this hot woman is washing her man’s under-clothes and fantasizing, with suggestive gyrating movements? At least that caught the attention of women’s organizations and the ad was withdrawn.

I asked someone I knew once, a man of course, why they wanted women everywhere. All I got was a look, a how-can-you-ask-a-dumb-question look. Arguments proved futile. They simply wanted women to be there in the foreground. Who cares if they have zilch to do with the product itself? Amusing to me at one end. Which of us would want to see a man selling us face cream or something more private, I wonder?

And then you have those print ads. Those I am forced to see in magazines. Brand recall again: one premier alcohol brand has this sleepy looking girl (seductive look, my dear, I was corrected though) looking on from a bar stool with a little black dress on. Something about nights, the ad was. Do I need to even ask again the relevance?

While I am ranting here about the irrelevance of it all, let me add to my list the portrayal of women in advertisements. If adding them as a prop for men’s products is one thing, boxing them into regressive stereotypes is another. I forget the products, but I am personally tired of seeing the perfect, always smiling mother grinning while she washes her son’s dirty clothes, the others, all typical to some 20 years ago. Sure, we still have these models of mothers and wives, I grant that. But could we also have something more “these days” scenarios please? I would love to see women in less bimbo roles and better clad.

Someone once told me that section 19a of the Constitution grants the freedom to rant and complain and crib (a mere “freedom of expression” seemed too prosaic for this person!). I rant and complain here. I could stand up on a pedestal and start forth a little speech, ranting about the futility of it all. There is even a forum where you can even register your complaints against advertisements that you find objectionable, they will look into it and take suitable action.

But then, I call myself practical. Marketing and advertising gurus will continue experiments of futility. Men, the species that they are, will of course not see the irrelevance of women in every ad. I suppose that just makes us, women who would buy stuff even without men selling them, the better-brained species eh?

The Author
 Based in Bangalore, 20-something Dharithri fancies herself a writer. Besides ranting on any issue that catches her fancy, in whatever means she can, she loves to read and write--a lot. She also constantly travels in her head and often otherwise, dreams of turning a farmer someday and living the outdoors-y life. She can rarely resist the pull of a paper and a pen, mainly because writing is cheaper than therapy! Dharithri is, beneath her layers of complexity, just someone who likes expressing what the various voices in her head tell her.

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