Daily Times

When a significant number of feminists and members of the patriarchal moral outrage machine — mortal enemies, in almost all scenarios imaginable — find themselves on the same side of an issue, one can assume something truly remarkable has transpired. Alas, the issue in question is something as banal as a newspaper advertisement. The Pakistani side of social media lit up over the weekend in reaction to a ‘provocative’ advertisement, ostensibly for a cellular company, which prominently featured a cut-out of Bollywood actress Nargis Fakhri posing at the bottom of the front pages of a widely popular Urdu daily. It is an unmistakably eye-catching visual, if only for the simple reason that the cut-out is far removed from the rest of the advertisement — which hovers somewhere in the middle of the page — by a wall of text, thus leaving the viewer to gawk at the surreal image, deliberately lacking in context, of a sexualised female figure inexplicably eating up space of an all-important news report about Altaf Hussain.

Naturally, whenever female sexuality is let out of the secretive corners of society and its existence acknowledged so brazenly, it jars and it offends. It follows then that this advertisement was duly condemned as obscene and created what is known in this age as a ‘Twitter storm’. As happens in these cases, the outrage, gaining impressive steam, was countered with incredulity. Broadly speaking, the offended had two distinct sides to their argument. The more palpable side angrily decried an affront to societal honour and religious norms. The other side did not take umbrage with the right of women to revel in their sexuality but strongly objected to the objectification of women for crass commercial gains. However, this subtle but essential difference seems to have been conveniently overlooked in the reaction to the reaction and the two sides are conflated.

The counter-offense then paints all criticism as the hysterical intolerance of a militant society. It accuses the offended of being hypocrites, of salaciously enjoying pornographic material in private while getting on the moral high horse over an ‘innocent’ image. Others are full of praises for the ‘boldness’ of the advertisement and laud it for doing its job in generating publicity. No publicity like bad publicity, indeed. Others still treat the entire affair with immeasurable disdain. Why focus on these petty issues of advertisements when there are real crises plaguing the nation?

Now, while not disputing the fact that Pakistan is indeed suffering from an astronomical assortment of existential plights, to snigger at the cultural impact of advertisements is facile. To be unequivocal, advertisements matter and they play a great role in shaping and reinforcing cultural practices and norms by positioning themselves as objects of aspiration. That is the entire secret of their success; these advertisements train the masses consuming them unthinkingly to mould expectations about the ‘good life’ based on what is being portrayed. And that is a deeply disturbing reality. Thus, every opportunity to highlight the problems of the industry must be seized with both hands.

Caught between the conservatives, who are comforted by asinine images of housewives jockeying to please their picky patriarchs, and the bold trailblazers for whom pushing the envelope means intently focusing on the posterior, it is women who disproportionately suffer from the tropes of advertisements. They suffer not just by the expectations they are subconsciously forced to adhere to, whether they be expectations about bodily figure or expectations about domestic conduct, but also by the way expectations and perceptions about them are solidified for the ‘other half of society’ through this ghastly enterprise.

And one can only rely on a woman’s perspective to really understand the seriousness of this problem. Recall the furore around the now infamous Hardees’ ad from a few months ago. For those blissfully in the dark, the ad featured two buns suggestively made to look like human buttocks as a hand hovered about, ready to grope. I confess to laughing at the outrage the advertisement generated at the time and being firmly on the side of people suggesting those offended to “Take it easy, man! It is just good fun!” However, thankfully, soon I was made to realise the implications of the advertisement by offended female friends. To them, rather than being anything resembling ‘good fun’, it was a toxic reminder of the lecherous advances they have to be careful to avoid whenever out and about in public. Standing in a line, travelling on a bus, walking in a busy market, the action that the Hardees’ ad was appropriating and, more damningly, normalising to sell a few burgers was their personal living hell.

That right there is the essence of the outrage over objectification of women in advertisements. Simply to sell unrelated products, the world of advertisement dehumanises women and reduces their worth only to their sexual appeal, and engenders a milieu where they are seen as nothing else. The cellular company’s advertisement from above partakes in this exercise so uninhibitedly that it might as well be parody. And rather amusingly it is mostly only those who vociferously identify themselves as ‘liberals’ who refuse to acknowledge this insidious paradigm. It is expedient to shrug off these complaints as outpourings of a regressive mindset rather than confronting their own privileged hypocrisy. This then results in the thoroughly undeserved elevation of these clichéd and passé advertisements to the realm of heroic, defiant creative expression, which is perhaps the biggest tragedy of this entire affair.

But high-minded defences of such advertisements claiming that they challenge our societal reluctance to embrace women participating in public are missing the point. I do not have the statistics but I will confidently bet that most of the crew and creative force behind advertisements in Pakistan are men and that the female models that participate in them do so because of a paucity of options and professional necessity. Quite apart from being liberating, the advertisements are then but another kind of subjugation of women to male desires of a different variety. Of course, it is a different matter entirely if women themselves consciously revolt against the oppressive sanctimony of society and choose to express themselves as, among other things, beings with sexuality. The key question here is that of agency and intention.

Thus, those who see such advertisements as harmless provocations need to interrogate their convictions and positions. They need to be able to critically analyse the damaging implications of the advertisements (and other forms of popular media) they currently champion as the salvos of free thought against the tyranny of conservatism. If the controversy surrounding this ad can engender a thoughtful debate that can create enough pressure to force a change in advertising standards, then it might be a force for good. Unfortunately, as things stand, the ‘debate’ has already devolved to the counterproductive tribal camps of ‘liberal’ versus ‘non-liberal’ and there is no apparent way out.

The writer is an assistant editor at Daily Times