Daily Times

The sports advertisement that I chose to analyse from Pakistani media is about a girl. She belongs to a middle class family. She is infatuated with cricket. She never gave up cricket despite her father is totally against her passion for her passion. She is leaving for the final selection of Pakistan women cricket team and her father is not happy with her. Finally, she gets selected in the team and plays for Pakistan. Everyone, relatives, neighbours and friends congratulate her father for her daughter’s success. After sometime, her father develops a feeling of understanding for her daughter and lastly, she accepts her passion as a profession.

The sports advertisement that I chose from America is about an actual and happening marathon challenge in America between men and women. In the ad, a women get up early in the morning and get informed about the challenge through internet and she immediately joins in and her boyfriend is still sleeping and the statistics were, Men ran = 3106 Km and Women ran = 1242 km. After that,  everywhere in the city women get kitted up and start running and get far accelerative as compare to men. During the challenge, they tease each other in a humorous manner, many famous sports stars were the part of this ad, then men get motivated and start running and get equal to the women and the challenge still goes on.

Relating both ads with Jacque Lacan’s theory

According to my understanding Jacque Lucan’s theory perfectly fits on this ad,  which is about gender social roles, goals, relationship of gender with their surroundings and what is acceptable for both genders, suitable roles that what a men and women should do.

It was unacceptable act of Sara according to her father as well as conferring to our society. According to Jacque Lucan’s theory, there are some appropriate and defined rules of a society that both women and men have to follow. Obviously, we can see that Sara is going against those rules set by the society. We can also say that it was more like a taboo in our society that if women go against her family and most of all against her father, because in our society fathers are considered to be the head of the family and whatever fathers say, we are bound to follow. This is what we can define here about the “gender relation” notion of Lucan’s theory.

Now, if we see what is acceptable or not for both genders according to Lucan’s theory in term of this ad Obviously, a middle class father always wants her daughter to be highly educated, sophisticated and to follow the path of father for success. But, there is a specific class who don’t care about such stuff in our society. May be her father wants her to learn the household stuff or her father wants to see her getting married with a nice guy because this is what our norms, customs and values are according to a middle class family showed in the ad. Well, they created an emotional approach to empower women and to target the local public of Pakistan to empower and permit women to do whatever they want to.

According to me “media and feminism” theory applies on this ad, which is about women social roles and power, neo-feminism, feminism catching fire over the period of time, getting changed and getting different meaning over the time, different campaigns to empower women and wrong perception of feminism.

According to oxford dictionary, feminism means: ‘The advocacy of women’s rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes’. That is exactly what the ad is portraying that in every place, whether it is work, sports, office or any other stuff women are now equal to men. In the start of the ad, when the ratio of the women running was very low, every women of the city got out their house and started running on the roads and got advanced in comparison to men, even more.

In the middle of the ad when women started teasing men in a humorous and manner able way, that was the part where I saw a glimpse of neo-feminism. In this part the women were showing them that we are even more powerful than men, and yes, in many cases it’s true.

There was a clear message in that advertisement that the time is changing and this is our time.

Sometimes people get confused with it and make a wrong perception of what feminism really is.

What I like the most was the ending of the ad which shows us exactly what actually feminism tells us, men and women both were equally running and scoring points for them.

Cultural References

Obviously, as a Pakistani, I can totally understand the culture references in Pakistani ad. First, the father’s order, you can’t contradict with it, at least not a woman. A woman can’t do it is also the part of our culture references. What I felt after watching the ad is that there is a life already defined for a middle class family and even a girl can’t think on her own for her future. It is already decided by the family or the guardians. Those emotion that a mother was depicting, what a father love is all about for her daughter and what a daughter’s respectable feelings for her father are the most important and notable cultural references in the ad about our society and this is what media is portraying.

Pakistani sports ads were just about Pepsi, Imran Khan, Wasim Akram, Shahid Khan Afridi and some other notable male celebrities but this ad has provided us a new approach to empower women not just in education but also in extracurricular and sports as well.

Now the cultural references in the American ad. Though, I am not a part of that society but media has made everything globalized so I can at least give an analysis.

It is not like that in American society patriarchy does not exist, yes it does and that is why they have made such ads to promote women equality.

They give an equal challenge to men in every field of work. American society has accepted the equality of both genders but we have not yet. This is what the culture references of American society are portrayed in that ad. In their society parents encourage their kids when they do something new or something more than their ability or try to achieve a big goal.

Representing social construction of gender roles, sexuality and stereotyping

I believe defining gender in terms of above mentioned notions is the most debatable and controversial issue of this time when everyone is aware and educated and have different thoughts about different matters.

Social construction is about building a perception about a certain gender by the society. it is not always reality but may be sometimes, for example: women are not good drivers, it actually not true but is a socially constructed role about woman through media as well. Whenever a girl is driving a car she always hits the hero, particularly in Indian cinema or media.

The factors that represent the gender of a person in a society are the gender images. For example, a big beard, a more masculine style of walking and talking can represents you as a dominant male in the Pakistani society.

Therefore, it is a dire need to bring gender equality in our society in every field so that female can also contribute to the betterment of the society.