From politics to entertainment to the workplace, women have made significant progress in the past few decades. However, one place where women are often disdained but should be respected the most is contemporary media, or more precisely, the advertising industry.
The unhealthy practice of sexualising products has existed in the cosmetic industry for a long time. Our advertisement industry has a tendency to involve the gratification of senses while marketing its products. Its ‘mantra’ is to target consumers’ sensual needs to increase the sale of its products.
A prime example of this would be a popular body lotion ad that aired in 2012. In the ad, a girl is seen talking to her friend about how her husband won’t stop touching her ever since she started using the product. The husband is seen getting distracted by the female actor, who is wearing a saree while applying the product on her torso.
The ad shows that the actor’s skin becomes visibly flawless and soft, and so, her husband can’t help but get distracted by it. This sparked a particular response of anger and disgust within me, but one thing that pushed me off the edge was the tagline used in the commercial: “Now relationships will also get better with skin.”
The same company has a similar advertisement where a woman is shown trying to reach something that’s kept on a higher shelf; she is wearing a saree with her pallu tucked in her waist. Seeing her shining torso, her partner grabs her by the waist to lift her up, but it is just an excuse to touch her again. And just like the previous ad, this ad also has a ridiculous tagline: “Helps wake love again.”
Both of these ads made me question whether this society just thinks of women as objects that can be used to sexualise products and increase their sales. By doing this, they are not only sowing wrong opinions in the mind of the generation but also exploiting the products. And this ad just portrays the classic impression that “boys will be boys”.
These ads are not the only ones; there are many such ads, like the common soap brand. In this, a woman is seen smelling the product while taking a bath in a royal bathhouse. Later in the video, she is seen attending a royal event where the photographers seem to get attracted to the fragrance coming from her. Similarly, in another luxury brand lipstick ad, the woman is seen just wearing a shirt as an overcoat while roaming around in her mansion. In the posters of one of the ads by this brand, the product is kept in the woman’s cleavage.
All these ads follow the same pattern and the same method of sexualising products just to increase their sale. The ads are so absurd for trying to imply that moisturisers can help repair relationships. Targetting the consumers’ sensual needs just to promote a product is not just an unhealthy practice but a trend in the advertising industry.
There are many ads that sell their products just fine, without adding naked women or men in their ad. Then why can’t others do the same? If rules and regulations were to be implemented within the advertising industry, society would change for the better. Girls would not grow up with a negative image of their bodies and men wouldn’t see themselves as some pervy monsters. Regulations should be made and followed because only they will lead us to a place where the media is not home to sexualising.